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the hook and thus break the connection. Martin threw the instrument
violently on the floor, where it broke.
"Dirty rat, I see it now. You have been making fun of me
all
the time. I thought you were hard up, and I wanted to help you,
and you-you were having fun on the quiet, thinking about your
bank account. It was nothing but stealing, that's what it was. You
should have refused and left the work to a man that needed it. But
the gentleman wanted to treat himself to a taste of Paris at night.
The gentleman wanted a thrill and a lark. With Lappe street closed,
you had to get them somewhere else. Say it again, rat, say that you
came out to play gangster, to play the big shot...."
"Martin, don't get mad. Let me explain...."
Grandgil would have liked to clear himself of the crime of
dilettantism, the most disgraceful and least pardonable of offenses
to the mind of a hard-working man, with an exaggerated conscious–
ness of the importance of his acts, if not of his function. "No," he
thought, "it was not from dilettantism that I followed him into the
cellar. I obeyed an impulse of serious and humane curiosity; and
it was the same curiosity that led me into this foolishness with Jam–
blier, the same desire to understand, and to upset the scenery to see
what was behind the show." Nevertheless, he was slow to justify
himself by such arguments, and admitted in
his
own mind that he
had gone into it partly for the sake of the game, or at least in pursuit
of artistic pleasure.
"I don't want you to explain to me," raged Martin. "And be–
sides, there is nothing to explain. You amused yourself like a tart,
without a thought for the consequences. I say it again, like a tart.
Me, I earn my keep, I work hard. You, you have butted in on my
work, you have done everything to jail me."
"All right," said Grandgil, in a dry tone.
"As
for the work, I
will have done my part of it, and Jamblier won't lose anything."
"I'm not talking about that. You butted in on my work."
"You're bursting my eardrums, with your work. Your rolled
brim is all very well, but now you're putting on the high hat."
Grandgil walked away, shrugging his shoulders. Martin turned
half way round. His glance rested first on the table where the sug–
gestive drawings were spread out, and then moved to the easel which
held the portrait of a woman. He had not been mistaken in it, and
