had cracked across the toe.

The beginning of the quarrel was trivial enough. But by the end they
got to generalities. Lewisham had begun the day in a bad temper and
under the cloud of an overnight passage of arms--and a little incident
that had nothing to do with their ostensible difference lent it a
warmth of emotion quite beyond its merits. As he emerged through the
folding doors he saw a letter lying among the sketchily laid breakfast
things, and Ethel's attitude suggested the recoil of a quick movement;
the letter suddenly dropped. Her eyes met his and she flushed. He sat
down and took the letter--a trifle awkwardly perhaps. It was from Miss
Heydinger. He hesitated with it halfway to his pocket, then decided to
open it. It displayed an ample amount of reading, and he read. On the
whole he thought it rather a dull sort of letter, but he did not allow
this to appear. When it was read he put it carefully in his pocket.

That formally had nothing to do with the quarrel. The breakfast was
already over when the quarrel began. Lewisham's morning was vacant,
and be proposed to occupy it in the revision of certain notes bearing
upon "Sandhurst Science." Unhappily the search for his note-book
brought him into collision with the accumulation of Ethel's
novelettes.

"These things are everywhere," he said after a gust of vehement
handling, "I _wish_ you'd tidy them up sometimes."

"They were tidy enough till you began to throw them about," Ethel
pointed out.

"Confounded muck! it's only fit to be burnt," Lewisham remarked to the
universe, and pitched one viciously into the corner.

"Well, you tried to write one, anyhow," said Ethel, recalling a
certain "Mammoth" packet of note-paper that had come on an evil end
before Lewisham found his industrial level. This reminiscence always
irritated him exceedingly.

"Eh?" he said sharply.

"You tried to write one," repeated Ethel--a little unwillingly.

"You don't mean me to forget that."

"It's you reminded me."

He stared hostility for a space.

"Well, the things make a beastly litter anyhow; there isn't a tidy
corner anywhere in the room. There never is."

"That's just the sort of thing you always say."

"Well--_is_ there?"

"Yes, there is."

"_Where_?"

Ethel professed not to hear. But a devil had possession of Lewisham
for a time. "It isn't as though you had anything else to do," he
remarked, wounding dishonourably.

Ethel turned. "If I _put_ those things a