is for you----"

"I didn't say it was painful. I said it was barred."

"Well, you goad me into it, with your unspeakable folly; too much under
Lil's thumb to check Roy, even for his own good. For heaven's sake,
Nevil, put your foot down firmly, for once, and reverse your crazy
decision."

He gave her a long, direct look. "Sorry to disappoint, after all the
trouble you've taken," he said in a level tone, "but I've already told
you the matter's settled. My foot is down on that as firmly as even
_you_ could wish."

"You _mean_ it?" she gasped, too incredulous for wrath.

"I mean it."

"Yet you see the danger?"

"I see the danger."

The fact that he would not condescend to lie to her eased a little her
bitter sense of defeat.

She rose awkwardly--all of a piece.

"Then I have no more to say. I wash my hands of you all. Until you come
to your senses, I don't cross this threshold again."

In spite of the threadbare phrases, genuine pain vibrated in her tone.

"Don't rant, old thing. You know you'll never keep it up," Nevil urged
more gently than he had spoken yet.

But anger still dominated pain.

"When _I_ say a thing, I mean it," she retorted stiffly, "as you will
find to your cost." Without troubling to answer, he lunged for the door
handle; but she waved him aside. "All humbug--playing at
politeness--when you've spurned my advice."

"As you please." He stood back for her to pass. "Sorry it's upset you
so. But we'll see you here again--when you've got over it."

"The _boy_ would have got over it in no time," she flung back at him
from the threshold. "Mark my words, disaster will come of it. Then
perhaps you'll admit I was right."

He felt no call to argue that point. She was gone.... And she had
carefully refrained from slamming the door. Somehow that trifling act of
restraint impressed him with a sense of finality oddly lacking in her
dramatic asseveration.

He stood a few moments staring at the polished oak panels. Then he
turned back and sat down in the chair she had occupied; and all the
inner tension of the last hour went suddenly, completely to pieces....

It was the penalty of his artist nature, this sharp nervous reaction
from strain; and with it came crowding back all the insidious doubts and
anxieties that even Lilamani's wisdom had not entirely charmed away. He
felt torn at the moment between anger with Roy for causing all this
pother; and anger with Jane, who, for all her lack of tende