ance above the
horizon. How differently they paint their pictures of the world."

Her companion only nodded.

While Eben Tollman contributed his part to the program of housekeeping
without servants, by manipulating the phonograph from the living-room,
Stuart had been studying the aproned figure at the sink.

Her face, in repose, held a pallid unrest of tried endurance, and
occasionally she paused in her task to listen, with unexpressed
nervousness, to the voluptuous swell of the music.

As he reached out for a rinsed plate their hands touched and she
started.

"Conscience," said the man thoughtfully, "you've been very studiously
avoiding me of late. I mean avoiding me when I could talk to you alone.
For all your boasts of self-confidence, you're afraid of me. Isn't that
true?"

"No," she said, "I'm only avoiding unnecessary battles." Suddenly her
voice became almost querulous. "That phonograph is getting on my nerves.
Aren't you sick of it?"

"Jack London wrote a story once," he replied calmly, "of a Klondike
prospector and his dog. Between them there was a feud of long-treasured
hatred."

Conscience glanced at him questioningly.

"What has that to do with Eben and the phonograph?" she inquired.

"The dog couldn't endure music. When a violin string spoke, he howled
his misery. It was as if the bow were being drawn across the rawness of
his own taut nerves.... That dish is ready for me, isn't it?"

She handed it to him, and he went on imperturbably: "The man would let
the violin strings cry out until the beast's howls of sheer agony
mingled with their strains. There came a time when the dog squared
accounts. Eben's music reminded me of the story."

Conscience turned off a water faucet and faced her companion
indignantly. She was inwardly trembling, with a nameless disquiet and
anxiety.

"Stuart," she exclaimed, "this campaign of vague accusation isn't a very
brave device and, in theory at least, you've always stood for fairness."

"I've ceased to believe in _his_ fairness," he told her promptly. "I
believe that what he thinks isn't fit to print and he's trying to drive
you, whether or no, into vindicating his rotten implications."

A piece of chinaware slipped from his hands and crashed on the floor and
so tense were the woman's nerves that a low scream escaped her lips.

The mail wagon passed the tin box down by the edge of the pine thicket
twice a day and the latest of these visits was between eight