coming between him and his work, and that her voice rang softly
and persistently in his ear. Over and over in that voice's
slender music--plaintive, laughing, reaching everywhere so
clearly--he heard the detested "line": "What are you two good
people conspiring about?" Over and over he saw the slow,
comprehending movement with which she removed her hat and veil
to let Talbot Potter judge her. And as she stood, with that
critic's eye searching her, Canby remembered that through some
untraceable association of ideas he had inexplicably thought of
a drawing of "Florence Dombey" in an old set of Dickens
engravings he had seen at his grandfather's in his boyhood--and
had not seen since. And he remembered the lilac bushes in bloom
on a May morning at his grandfather's. Somehow she made him
think of them, too.

And as he sat at his desk, striving to concentrate upon the
manuscript, the clearness with which Wanda Malone came before
him increased; she became more and more vivid to him, and she
would not be dismissed; she persisted and insisted, becoming
first an annoyance, and then, as he fought the witchery, a
serious detriment to his writing. She became part of every
thought about his play, and of every other thought. He did not
want her; he felt no interest in her; he had vital work to do--
and she haunted him, seemed to be in the very room with him. He
worked in spite of her, but she pursued him none the less
constantly; she had gone down the stairs to dinner with him; she
floated before him throughout the torture of Miss Cornish's
address; she was present even when he exploded and fled; she was
with him now, in this desolate walk toward Talbot Potter's
apartment--the pale, symmetrical little face and the relentless