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MISS REED, in a low voice: “Oh, how could you think such a cruel, vulgar thing?” Miss Spaulding leaves the piano, and softly approaches her, where she has sunk on her knees beside the register.

RANSOM: “It was tantamount to telling me that she had been amusing herself with me instead of my lessons. It remanded our whole association, which I had got to thinking so romantic, to the relation of teacher and pupil. It was a snub–a heartless, killing snub; and I couldn’t see it in any other light.” Ransom walks away to the window, and looks out.

MISS REED, flinging herself backward from the register, and hiding her face in her hands: “Oh, it wasn’t! it wasn’t! it wasn’t! How could you think so?”

MISS SPAULDING, rushing forward, and catching her friend in her arms: “What is the matter with you, Ethel Reed? What are you doing here, over the register? Are you trying to suffocate yourself? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

GRINNIDGE: “Our fair friend on the other side of the wall seems to be on the rampage.”

MISS SPAULDING, shutting the register with a violent clash: “Ugh! how hot it is here!”

GRINNIDGE: “Doesn’t like your conversation, apparently.”

MISS REED, frantically pressing forward to open the register: “Oh, don’t shut it, Nettie, dear! If you do I shall die! Do-o-n’t shut the register!”

MISS SPAULDING: “Don’t shut it? Why, we’ve got all the heat of the furnace in the room now. Surely you don’t want any more?”

MISS REED: “No, no; not any more. But–but–Oh, dear! what shall I do?” She still struggles in the embrace of her friend.

GRINNIDGE, remaining quietly at the register, while Ransom walks away to the window: “Well, what did you do?”

MISS REED: “There, there! They’re commencing again! DO open it, Nettie. I WILL have it open!” She wrenches herself free, and dashes the register open.

GRINNIDGE: “Ah, she’s opened it again.”

MISS REED, in a stage-whisper: “That’s the other one!”

RANSOM, from the window: “Do? I’ll tell you what I did.”

MISS REED: “That’s Ol–Mr. Ransom. And, oh, I can’t make out what he’s saying! He must have gone away to the other side of the room– and it’s at the most important point!”

MISS SPAULDING, in an awful undertone: “Was that the hollow rumbling I heard? And have you been listening at the register to what they’ve been saying? O ETHEL!”

MISS REED: “I haven’t been listening, exactly.”

MISS SPAULDING: “You have! You have been eavesdropping!”

MISS REED: “Eavesdropping is listening through a key-hole, or around a corner. This is very different. Besides, it’s Oliver, and he’s been talking about ME. Hark!” She clutches her friend’s hand, where they have crouched upon the floor together, and pulls her forward to the register. “Oh, dear, how hot it is! I wish they would cut off the heat down below.”

GRINNIDGE, smoking peacefully through the silence which his friend has absent-mindedly let follow upon his last words: “Well, you seem disposed to take your time about it.”

RANSOM: “About what? Oh, yes! Well” –

MISS REED: “‘Sh! Listen.”

MISS SPAULDING: “I won’t listen! It’s shameful: it’s wicked! I don’t see how you can do it, Ethel!” She remains, however, kneeling near the register, and she involuntarily inclines a little more toward it.