an artistic snob. He stood it all calmly because of
his recent experience with poverty, but he was determined to fight
ultimately. He was no longer, or at least not going to be, he thought,
the ambling, cowardly, dreaming Witla he had been. He was going to stand
up, and he did begin to.

"Remember, you are the last word here, Witla," Summerfield had told him
on one occasion. "If anything goes wrong here, you're to blame. Don't
make any mistakes. Don't let anyone accuse you falsely. Don't run to me.
I won't help you."

It was such a ruthless attitude that it shocked Eugene into an attitude
of defiance. In time he thought he had become a hardened and a changed
man--aggressive, contentious, bitter.

"They can all go to hell!" he said one day to Summerfield, after a
terrific row about some delayed pictures, in which one man who was
animated by personal animosity more than anything else had said hard
things about him. "The thing that's been stated here isn't so. My work
is up to and beyond the mark. This individual here"--pointing to the man
in question--"simply doesn't like me. The next time he comes into my
room nosing about I'll throw him out. He's a damned fakir, and you know
it. He lied here today, and you know that."

"Good for you, Witla!" exclaimed Summerfield joyously. The idea of a
fighting attitude on Eugene's part pleased him. "You're coming to life.
You'll get somewhere now. You've got the ideas, but if you let these
wolves run over you they'll do it, and they'll eat you. I can't help it.
They're all no good. I wouldn't trust a single God-damned man in the
place!"

So it went. Eugene smiled. Could he ever get used to such a life? Could
he ever learn to live with such cheap, inconsiderate, indecent little
pups? Summerfield might like them, but he didn't. This might be a
marvellous business policy, but he couldn't see it. Somehow it seemed to
reflect the mental attitude and temperament of Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield
and nothing more. Human nature ought to be better than that.

It is curious how fortune sometimes binds up the wounds of the past,
covers over the broken places as with clinging vines, gives to the
miseries and mental wearinesses of life a look of sweetness and comfort.
An illusion of perfect joy is sometimes created where still, underneath,
are cracks and scars. Here were Angela and Eugene living together now,
beginning to be visited by first one and then the other of those they
had known in the