"I don't think that's the point, is it?" asked the girl, in a very cool
voice. She was experiencing her first shock of disappointment in him, and
felt unhappy; but she only appeared critical.

"What do you mean?" he asked, dashed.

"Whether he understood or not." She was still looking away from him. "It
was so unkind and unnecessary to break out at the poor man like that
--and," her voice dropped, "so horribly rude."

"Well," Stefan answered uncomfortably, "I can't be polite to people like
that. I don't even try."

"No, I know you don't. That's what I don't like," Mary replied, even more
coldly. She meant that it hurt her, obscured the ideal she was
constructing of him, but she could not have expressed that.

He painted for a few minutes in a silence that grew more and more
constrained. Then he threw down his brush. "Well, I can't paint," he
exclaimed in an aggrieved tone, "I'm absolutely out of tune. You'll have
to realize I'm made like that. I can't change, can't hide my real self."
As she still did not speak, he added, with an edge to his voice, "I may
as well go away; there's nothing I can do here." He stood up.

"Perhaps you had better," she replied, very quietly. Her throat was
aching with hurt, so that she could hardly speak, but to him she appeared
indifferent.

"Good-bye," he exclaimed shortly, and strode off.