at breakfast time and hide the small green envelopes, which then
arrived by the last post and were brought in at 9 p.m. by the
complaisant Lily.

Then what a flow of words! Poor critics, publishers, and readers; what
a set they were, how blind, how asinine, how spiteful! Sometimes he
would at once go to his study and write a reply, which Helena did not
in every case succeed in rescuing before it got into the pillar-box,
though certainly her score was bigger.

It was a trying month and he did not spare even her. When there were
no reviews to tear verbally--and sometimes other ways--in fragments, he
would moan plaintively that this meant he would never get another sou
out of the book beyond the small advance already paid, and nobody would
want to read the next one either, and Heaven knew how they would pay
the house-bills.

"I don't suppose any one will even publish it," he would say, almost
gloating, like a schoolboy probing his cut finger.

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried, believing him, "it does seem awful. And to
think you were so successful till you married me and had to write this
terrible pot-boiler. Oh, how I wish you'd never done it!"

"What, married you?" he asked, suddenly laughing. "Bother shop! Come
along out and see if we can't find a good stick to throw for the
hound;" and as he passed, he kissed her on the hair and drew her up on
to her feet.

His moods were so abrupt, just now, that sometimes she grew frightened.

It was lucky, then, that she had got her consolation; the great secret.
Geoffrey Alison was far less frequent in the house these days, not
having totally forgotten yet that grip upon his throat, and she would
have been very desolate when Hubert was locked in with his work if she
could not have flown excitedly to hers. Absorbed entirely in the
opinion and career of the increasingly contemptible Virginia, she found
herself free for a while from all the worries of real life, returning
to them with a mind refreshed as by the most luxurious of sleep; the
reason why there will be always writers, even when cinemas and cheap
editions have made it not a paid, but an extravagant, profession.

So utterly absorbed was she, indeed, about six weeks after the fatal
day of publication, that the drawing-room door was open before she had
noticed any warning noise outside. Helena realised that it was far too
late by now to hide the sheets of manuscript and substitute a letter,
as she always did. Any att