"Nobody in particular--everybody," she replied, as she set her notebook
on the rack.

"There is some one else!" he exclaimed, rising.

"There is every one else," she said.

As was his habit when agitated, he began to smoke feverishly, glancing at
her from time to time as she fingered the keys. Experience had led him to
believe that he who finds a woman in revolt and gives her a religion
inevitably becomes her possessor. But more than a month had passed, he
had not become her possessor--and now for the first time there entered
his mind a doubt as to having given her a religion! The obvious inference
was that of another man, of another influence in opposition to his own;
characteristically, however, he shrank from accepting this, since he was
of those who believe what they wish to believe. The sudden fear of losing
her--intruding itself immediately upon an ecstatic, creative
mood--unnerved him, yet he strove to appear confident as he stood over
her.

"When you've finished typewriting that, we'll go out to supper," he told
her.

But she shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to," she replied--and then, to soften her refusal, she
added, "I can't, to-night."