A restless month went by.  It was February.

Unfortunately, Oliver’s work failed to engross him.  He grew moodier, more exacting.  If Myra arrived home late, he wanted to know where she had been, whom she had seen.  Were they dining out, he muttered unsociable objections; were people coming to the house, he complained of the lack of privacy.  What a whirl they lived in!  So they did, but what was the remedy?  Myra herself felt helpless in a tangle of engagements.  They overpowered her.  She could not seem to cut her way through them.  Then there were rehearsals for the concert.  David Cannon came to her or she went to him nearly every day.  Usually Oliver was present, putting in his opinion between each song.  Did David think the South Americans would appreciate that kind of music?  How did he think they would like Myra?  And so on and on.

David Cannon, never patient, a rough-tongued, self-absorbed genius, resented these interruptions, and was brief in his methods of expressing as much.  Even Myra, the most tactful of diplomatists, could not smooth over occasional ugly moments between the two men.  She understood Oliver better than he understood himself.  His unreasoning love, his apprehensive vanity, would have unsettled a less maternal spirit; but she found a kind of mystic wonder in it, he battled so blindly for possession of her.  He was in her way, and she could not advance without pushing him aside.  Had he come to her and blustered, “You shall not leave me for any purpose whatsoever,” she would have denied him the right of dictation; but there was no such conflict of wills.

They were both involved in this love of their making—­a love whose demands were treacherous.  Each day brought up trivial attacks, fancied grievances, little fears unavowed; but when she sought to meet the issue squarely, it eluded her.  Oliver’s nightly repentance for his daily whims and suspicions drew her nightly into his arms.  Enfolded there, she felt moored to his love; and, sleepless, she questioned any life apart.

Two days before the recital, David Cannon, with whom she was going over the programme for the last time, turned suddenly from the piano with an impatient shrug of his shoulders.

“Rotten!” he said brutally, peering up at her.  “You’re not doing yourself justice.  What’s the matter with you?” Beneath the strong, overhanging brow his little eyes glowered fiercely.

They happened to be alone that afternoon in his great bare studio, where no soft background or dim lights conspired to hide her dejection.  She had sung badly.  She knew it, but she could not answer such a brusque attack, could not defend herself against harsh questioning.

“I don’t know.  Perhaps I’m tired,” she said.

David Cannon rose from the piano with the powerful lunging movement of a bull.

“You tired?  Nonsense!” His charge sent him beyond her a pace.  He wheeled and came up close.  He was shorter than she, but the sheer force of the man topped her.  His keen little eyes looked her over, took in her bright, drooping head, and her sloping-shouldered, slim-waisted health.  “Tired!” he grunted.  “That’s an excuse, not a reason.”  He tapped his heart and forehead.  “Your troubles lie here and here.”