been
very good to him.'

'Yes! I have! He knows it, and he does not deny it!' Madame Bonanni
suddenly sat up quite straight and squeezed Margaret's hands by way of
emphasis. 'But he does not care,' she went on, her anger rising a
little. 'Not he! He would rather that I should have been any sort of
miserable little proper middle-class woman, if I could only have been
technically "virtuous"! If I had been that, I might have beaten him to
an omelette every day when he was a boy, and tormented him like a
gadfly when he was a man! He would have preferred it--oh, by far! That
is the logic of men, my dear, their irrefutable logic that they are
always talking about and facing us down with! The miserable little
animal! I will give up loving him, I will hate him, as he deserves, I
will tell him to go to Peru, where he will never see his wicked old
mother again! Then he will be sorry, he will wish he were dead, but I
shall not go to him, never, never, never!'

She spoke the last words with tremendous energy, and a low echo of her
voice came back out of the open piano from the strings. She clenched
her fist and shook it at an imaginary Lushington in space, and for a
moment her face wore a look of Medean menace.

Margaret might have smiled, if she had not felt that the strange
creature was really and truly suffering, in her own way, to the borders
of distraction. Then, suddenly, the great frame was convulsed again and
quivered from head to foot.

'I'm going to cry,' she announced, in rather shaky tones.

And she cried. She slipped from the piano-stool to the floor, upon her
knees, and her heavy arms fell upon the keys with a crashing discord,
and her face buried itself in the large depths of one bent elbow, quite
regardless of damage to Paquin's masterpiece of a summer sleeve; and
with huge sobs the tears welled up and overflowed, taking everything
they found in their way, including paint, and washing all down between
the ivory keys of Margaret's piano.

Margaret saw that there was nothing to be done. At first she tried to
soothe her as best she could, standing over her, and laying a hand
gently on her shoulder; but Madame Bonanni shook it off with a sort of
convulsive shudder, as a big carthorse gets rid of a fly that has
settled on a part of his back inaccessible to his tail. Then Margaret
desisted, knowing that the fit must go on to its natural end, and that
it was hopeless to try and stop it sooner. Women are very practi