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Matthew arrived in a dark serge suit and a blue necktie, so that the general effect was quiet. Ann greeted him with kindliness and put him with his face to what little light there was. She chose for herself the window-seat. Sylvia had not arrived. She might be a little late–that is, if she came at all.

They talked about the weather for a while. Matthew was of opinion they were going to have some rain. Ann, who was in one of her contradictory moods, thought there was frost in the air.

“What did you say to her?” he asked.

“Sylvia? Oh, what you told me,” replied Ann. “That you had come to New York to–to look for her.”

“What did she say?” he asked.

“Said you’d taken your time about it,” retorted Ann.

Matthew looked up with an injured expression.

“It was her own idea that we should never meet,” he explained.

“Um!” Ann grunted.

“What do you think yourself she will be like?” she continued. “Have you formed any notion?”

“It is curious,” he replied. “I have never been able to conjure up any picture of her until just now.”

“Why ‘just now’?” demanded Ann.

“I had an idea I should find her here when I opened the door,” he answered. “You were standing in the shadow. It seemed to be just what I had expected.”

“You would have been satisfied?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

There was silence for a moment.

“Uncle Ab made a mistake,” he continued. “He ought to have sent me away. Let me come home now and then.”

“You mean,” said Ann, “that if you had seen less of me you might have liked me better?”

“Quite right,” he admitted. “We never see the things that are always there.”

“A thin, gawky girl with a bad complexion,” she suggested. “Would it have been of any use?”

“You must always have been wonderful with those eyes,” he answered. “And your hands were beautiful even then.”

“I used to cry sometimes when I looked at myself in the glass as a child,” she confessed. “My hands were the only thing that consoled me.”

“I kissed them once,” he told her. “You were asleep, curled up in Uncle Ab’s chair.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” said Ann.

She was seated with one foot tucked underneath her. She didn’t look a bit grown up.

“You always thought me a fool,” he said.

“It used to make me so angry with you,” said Ann, “that you seemed to have no go, no ambition in you. I wanted you to wake up–do something. If I had known you were a budding genius–“

“I did hint it to you,” said he.

“Oh, of course it was all my fault,” said Ann.

He rose. “You think she means to come?” he asked. Ann also had risen.

“Is she so very wonderful?” she asked.

“I may be exaggerating to myself,” he answered. “But I am not sure that I could go on with my work without her–not now.”

“You forgot her,” flashed Ann, “till we happened to quarrel in the cab.”

“I often do,” he confessed. “Till something goes wrong. Then she comes to me. As she did on that first evening, six years ago. You see, I have been more or less living with her since then,” he added with a smile.

“In dreamland,” Ann corrected.

“Yes, but in my case,” he answered, “the best part of my life is passed in dreamland.”

“And when you are not in dreamland?” she demanded. “When you’re just irritable, short-tempered, cranky Matthew Pole. What’s she going to do about you then?”

“She’ll put up with me,” said Matthew.

“No she won’t,” said Ann. “She’ll snap your head off. Most of the ‘putting up with’ you’ll have to do.”

He tried to get between her and the window, but she kept her face close to the pane.

“You make me tired with Sylvia,” she said. “It’s about time you did know what she’s like. She’s just the commonplace, short-tempered, disagreeable-if-she-doesn’t-get-her-own-way, unreasonable woman. Only more so.”