“I don’t know that he looked particularly a wreck,” March said.  “Not any worse, I mean, than he looked out at Hickory Hill the day you opened the season here.”

“He didn’t say anything about me, did he?” she asked.

“No,” March said, “I don’t think he did.”

“I suppose you’d remember it if he’d happened to tell you that he loathed and hated me and never wanted to see me again.”  Then she rose and went over to the opposite side of his little table and leaning down spread her hands out over his score.

“Oh, I know I said I wouldn’t bother, but do stop thinking about this and talk to me for a minute.  We’re having—­we’re having a perfectly hideous time.  He and I. We’ve been fighting like cat and dog for four days.  I don’t exactly know what it’s all about, except that it seems we hate each other and can’t go on.  You’ve got to tell me what to do.  It all started with you anyway.  With the time you brought around those Whitman songs.—­That was the day Mary came home from New York, too,” she added.

“All right,” he said, shutting down the cover upon his manuscript, “then Mary and I will try to patch you up.  That is, if we haven’t already done it.”

Her face darkened.  “Don’t try to talk the way they do,” she commanded.  “I’m not intelligent enough to take hints.  Do you mean that the whole trouble is that I’m jealous of Mary?  And that now she’s going to marry you I’ll have nothing to be jealous of?  Well, you’re wrong both ways.  There’s more to it than that.  And that isn’t going to stop just because she’s marrying you.  She’ll always be there for him.  And he’ll be there for her.  You’ll find that out before you’ve gone far.”

He didn’t seem disposed to dispute this, nor to be much perturbed about it, either.  He annoyed her by saying, “Well, if it’s a permanent fact, like snow in February, what’s the good of taking it so hard?”

“You can go south in February,” she retorted.  Then she went on, “I want to know if you don’t think I’ve a right to be jealous of her.  I’d saved his life.  He admitted that.  But when we went south, afterward, he simply didn’t want me around.  Sent me home pretending I’d be wanted for rehearsals.  And then he sent for her.  They spent a week together—­talking!  As far as that goes, they could have done it just as well if I’d been there.  They can talk right over my head and I never know what it’s all about.  Wait till they begin doing that with you!  I don’t suppose they will though.  You’re a talker, too.  He told her things he’d never told me-about his money troubles.  What he said to me was that he didn’t want to stand in the way of my career.  He left her to tell me the truth about it, later,—­after I’d told him I didn’t want any career—­though I’d just been offered the best chance I ever had.  And then, when he came and found that I’d done—­for him—­what he’d been trying to make me do for myself, he was furious.  We fought all night about it.  And when I came down the next morning, ready to do anything he wanted me to, he’d wandered off with Mary.  To talk me over with her again.—­Tell her some more things, I suppose, that I didn’t know about.”