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easy about it when Iā€™m caught by a big experiment, any more than you could be regular and easy and polite when you were gestating the baby.ā€

ā€œI know butā ā€”Darling, you get so nervous when youā€™re working like this. Heavens, I donā€™t care how much you offend people by missing engagementsā ā€”well, after all, I wish you wouldnā€™t, but I do know it may be unavoidable. But when you make yourself so drawn and trembly, are you gaining time in the long run? Itā€™s just for your own sake. Oh, I have it! Wait! Youā€™ll see what a scientist I am! No, I wonā€™t explainā ā€”not yet!ā€

Joyce had wealth and energy. A week later, flushed, slim, gallant, joyous, she said to him after dinner, ā€œIā€™ve got a surprise for you!ā€

She led him to the unoccupied rooms over the garage, behind their house. In that week, using a score of workmen from the most immaculate and elaborate scientific supply-house in the country, she had created for him the best bacteriological laboratory he had ever seenā ā€”white-tile floor and enameled brick walls, icebox and incubator, glassware and stains and microscope, a perfect constant-temperature bathā ā€”and a technician, trained in Lister and Rockefeller, who had his bedroom behind the laboratory and who announced his readiness to serve Dr. Arrowsmith day or night.

ā€œThere!ā€ sang Joyce. ā€œNow when you simply must work evenings, you wonā€™t have to go clear down to Liberty Street. You can duplicate your cultures or whatever you call ā€™em. If youā€™re bored at dinnerā ā€”all right! You can slip out here afterward and work as late as ever you want. Isā ā€”Sweet, is it all right? Have I done it right? I tried so hardā ā€”I got the best men I couldā ā€”ā€

While his lips were against hers he brooded, ā€œTo have done this for me! And to be so humble!ā ā€Šā ā€¦ And now, curse it, Iā€™ll never be able to get away by myself!ā€

She so joyfully demanded his finding some fault that, to give her the novel pleasure of being meek, he suggested that the centrifuge was inadequate.

ā€œYou wait, my man!ā€ she crowed.

Two evenings after, when they had returned from the opera, she led him to the cement-floored garage beneath his new laboratory, and in a corner, ready to be set up, was a secondhand but adequate centrifuge, a most adequate centrifuge, the masterpiece of the great firm of Berkeley-Saundersā ā€”in fact none other than Gladys, whose dismissal from McGurk for her sluttish ways had stirred Martin and Terry to go out and get bountifully drunk.

It was less easy for him, this time, to be grateful, but he worked at it.

IV

Through both the economico-literary and the Rolls-Royce section of Joyceā€™s set the rumor panted that there was a new diversion in an exhausted worldā ā€”going out to Martinā€™s laboratory and watching him work, and being ever so silent and reverent, except perhaps when Joyce murmured, ā€œIsnā€™t he adorable the way he teaches his darling bacteria to say ā€˜Pretty Pollyā€™!ā€ or when Latham Ireland convulsed them by arguing that scientists had no sense of humor, or Sammy de Lembre burst out in his marvelous burlesque of jazz:

Oh, Mistah Backā€‘silā€‘lilā€‘us, donā€™t you griā€‘in at me;
You miā€‘croā€‘biā€‘oā€‘logā€‘ic cuss, Iā€™m oā€‘on-to thee.
When Mr. Dr. Arrowsmithā€™s done looked at de clues,
Youā€™ll sit in jail aā€‘singinā€™ dem Bacā€‘terā€‘iā€‘uh Blues.

Joyceā€™s cousin from Georgia sparkled, ā€œMart is so cute with all those lil vases of his. But Ah can always get him so mad by tellinā€™ him the trouble with him is, he donā€™t go to church often enough!ā€

While Martin sought to concentrate.

They flocked from the house to his laboratory only once a week, which was certainly not enough to disturb a resolute manā ā€”merely enough to keep him constantly waiting for them.

When he sedately tried to explain this and that to Joyce, she said, ā€œDid we bother you this evening? But they do admire you so.ā€

He remarked, ā€œWell,ā€ and went to bed.

V

R. A. Hopburn, the eminent patent-lawyer, as he drove away from the Arrowsmith-Lanyon mansion grunted at his wife:

ā€œI donā€™t mind a host throwing the port at you, if he thinks youā€™re a chump, but I do mind his being bored at your daring to express any opinion whateverā ā€Šā ā€¦ Didnā€™t he look silly, out in his idiotic laboratory!ā ā€Šā ā€¦ How the deuce do you suppose Joyce ever came to marry him?ā€

ā€œI canā€™t imagine.ā€

ā€œI can only think of one reason. Of course she mayā ā€”ā€

ā€œNow please donā€™t be filthy!ā€

ā€œWell, anywayā ā€”She who might have picked any number of well-bred, agreeable, intelligent chapsā ā€”and I mean intelligent, because this Arrowsmith person may know all about germs, but he doesnā€™t know a symphony from a savoryā ā€Šā ā€¦ I donā€™t think Iā€™m too fussy, but I donā€™t quite see why we should go to a house where the host apparently enjoys flatly contradicting youā ā€Šā ā€¦ Poor devil, Iā€™m really sorry for him; probably he doesnā€™t even know when heā€™s being rude.ā€

ā€œNo. Perhaps. What hurts is to think of old Rogerā ā€”so gay, so strong, real Skull and Bonesā ā€”and to have this abrupt Outsider from the tall grass sitting in his chair, failing to appreciate his Pol Rogerā ā€”What Joyce ever saw in him! Though he does have nice eyes and such funny strong handsā ā€”ā€

VI

Joyceā€™s busyness was on his nerves. Why she was so busy it was hard to ascertain; she had an excellent housekeeper, a noble butler, and two nurses for the baby. But she often said that she was never allowed to attain her one ambition: to sit and read.

Terry had once called her The Arranger, and though Martin resented it, when he heard the telephone bell he groaned, ā€œOh, Lord, thereā€™s The Arrangerā ā€”wants me to come to tea with some high-minded hen.ā€

When he sought to explain that he must be free from entanglements, she suggested, ā€œAre you such a weak, irresolute, little man that the only way you can keep concentrated is by running away? Are you afraid of the big men who can do big work, and still stop and play?ā€

He was likely to turn abusive, particularly as

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