I've _hindered_ him!" She brought out the word with an agony of slow horror.

"And only to-day I read-here, look!" she faltered, going to the table and picking up with shaking hands a magazine.
Billy recognized it by the cover at once--another like it had been flung not so long ago by her own hand into the corner.

She was not surprised, therefore, to see very soon at the end of Marie's trembling finger: "Marriage and the Artistic Temperament." Billy did not give a ringing laugh this time.

She gave an involuntary little shudder, though she tried valiantly to turn it all off with a light word of scorn, and a cheery pat on Marie's heaving shoulders.

But she went home very soon; and it was plain to be seen that her visit to Marie had not brought her peace.
Billy knew Kate's letter, by heart, now, both in the original, and in its different versions, and she knew that, despite her struggles, she was being forced straight toward Kate's own verdict: that she, Billy, _was_ the cause, in some way, of the deplorable change in Bertram's appearance, manner, and work.