then said, "I'd have
liked your helping me eight months ago. But now, you'd simply be keeping
me."

"You weren't ready for it eight months ago." Fred leaned back at last in
his chair. "You simply weren't ready for it. You were too tired. You
were too timid. Your whole tone was too low. You couldn't rise from a
chair like that,"--she had started up apprehensively and gone toward the
window.--"You were fumbling and awkward. Since then you've come into
your personality. You were always locking horns with it before. You were
a sullen little drudge eight months ago, afraid of being caught at
either looking or moving like yourself. Nobody could tell anything about
you. A voice is not an instrument that's found ready-made. A voice is
personality. It can be as big as a circus and as common as
dirt.--There's good money in that kind, too, but I don't happen to be
interested in them.--Nobody could tell much about what you might be able
to do, last winter. I divined more than anybody else."

"Yes, I know you did." Thea walked over to the oldfashioned mantel and
held her hands down to the glow of the fire. "I owe so much to you, and
that's what makes things hard. That's why I have to get away from you
altogether. I depend on you for so many things. Oh, I did even last
winter, in Chicago!" She knelt down by the grate and held her hands
closer to the coals. "And one thing leads to another."

Ottenburg watched her as she bent toward the fire. His glance brightened
a little. "Anyhow, you couldn't look as you do now, before you knew me.
You WERE clumsy. And whatever you do now, you do splendidly. And you
can't cry enough to spoil your face for more than ten minutes. It comes
right back, in spite of you. It's only since you've known me that you've
let yourself be beautiful."

Without rising she turned her face away. Fred went on impetuously. "Oh,
you can turn it away from me, Thea; you can take it away from me! All
the same--" his spurt died and he fell back. "How can you turn on me so,
after all!" he sighed.

"I haven't. But when you arranged with yourself to take me in like that,
you couldn't have been thinking very kindly of me. I can't understand
how you carried it through, when I was so easy, and all the
circumstances were so easy."

Her crouching position by the fire became threatening. Fred got up, and
Thea also rose.

"No," he said, "I can't make you see that now. Some time later, perhaps,
you will understand better. For