"One never hears of you now." This was cruel, but she knew that he was "inciting her to riot," and she replied: "That's because you are so secluded--in your kindergarten for misfit statesmen.

Abandon knowledge, all ye who enter there!" It was the old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough to light the tinder of emotion.

She knew it, for he was cool and buoyant and really unconcerned, and she was feverish--and determined.
"You still make life worth living," he answered, gaily.
"It is not an occupation I would choose," she replied.

"It is sure to make one a host of enemies." "So many of us make our careers by accident," he rejoined.
"Certainly I made mine not by design," she replied instantly; and there was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to notice; but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however vaguely, her murderous treatment of him.
"But your career is not yet begun," he remarked.
Her eyes flashed--was it anger, or pique, or hurt, or merely the fire of intellectual combat?
"I am married," she said, defiantly, in direct retort.
"That is not a career--it is casual exploration in a dark continent," he rejoined.
"Come and say that to my husband," she replied, boldly.

Suddenly a thought lighted her eyes.