RANSOM: "Well, the long and the short of it was, I was hit--HARD,
and I lost all courage. You know how I am, Grinnidge."

MISS REED, softly: "Oh, poor fellow!"

RANSOM: "So I let the time go by, and at the end I hadn't said
anything."

MISS REED: "No, sir! You HADN'T!"

MISS SPAULDING gradually ceases to play, and fixes her attention
wholly upon Miss Reed, who bends forward over the register with an
intensely excited face.

RANSOM: "Then something happened that made me glad, for twenty-four
hours at least, that I hadn't spoken. She sent me the money for
twenty-five lessons. Imagine how I felt, Grinnidge! What could I
suppose but that she had been quietly biding her time, and storing up
her resentment for my having told her she couldn't learn to paint,
till she could pay me back with interest in one supreme insult?"

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