“I’m sorry, Anita.”
She came close to him. Her little hands were clenched. There was a wail
in her voice—
“You! Aren’t you friends with me? Didn’t I share her with you? Isn’t she
my work too? What would you say if I came to your house and saw your
work, your life work that she’d made possible, your pictures that are
her, all her—and slashed them with a knife? What would you do if I’d
done that, if I’d cut it to ribbons, your _Spring Song_?”
That moved him. I saw a sort of comprehension lighting his stubborn
face. The artist in her touched the artist in him. Of what lay behind
the artist he had no knowledge. But he said, quite humbly—
“Anita, I’m sorry!”
Yet I knew that he was not sorry for what he had done.
“Sorry! Sorry! Much good your sorrow does!” she shrilled, and I saw him
stiffen again. She was strange. She valued him, that was so plain, and
yet, it almost seemed in self-defence, she was always at her worst with
him. “Sorry! It was the key of the book. You’ve spoilt my book.”
“Nita! Nita! One letter!” Miss Howe was almost comical in her dislike of
the scene. “As if you couldn’t pull it off without that.” She pulled her
aside, lowering her voice—“Nita, what’s the use of a row? Pull yourself
together. Put yourself in his place. Besides—you can’t afford——” She
looked at Kent significantly. Anita’s pale glance followed her and so
their eyes met again. She was angry and sullen and irresolute. Another
woman would have been near tears.
“Kent,” she began. And then—“Kent—if we quarrel——We’re too old to
quarrel——If you had a shadow of excuse——”
He waited.
She took fire again because he did not meet her half way.
“But if you think you’ve stopped me——” she cried. She broke off with a
laugh and a new idea—“As if,” she said slowly and scornfully, “as if
Madala would have cared!”