importance and excitement. He came, now, almost
daily after five; as often, quite, as in the old days before the
garden-scene with Hubert; his mind full of the need to cheer this poor
sad Zoe who got no joy at all from her success. Surely as it grew and
there was still no prospect of detection, she would begin to think of
all the money she was earning and enjoy the praise? He hoped so.

"Look at this," he said keenly, waving an extract at her.

Her tones were dull. "What is it? Another review?"

"No, an advertisement. Awfully clever and suits our game too!"

He held it out to her. In bold print it ran thus:

"WHO?

"Already the wives of the following famous authors have publicly
declared that they did NOT write

_CONFESSIONS OF AN AUTHOR'S WIFE._"

(Here followed a list of eight names.)

"Ah! But who did?

WHO?"

"I don't see it suits us at all," she said without enthusiasm.

"Why, it's putting people on the wrong track," he tried to argue.

She would not have it. "It's making people want to know when they
don't really care a bit," she said with a ripe worldly wisdom quite
beyond her years.

And soon, to Mr. Blatchley's yet greater delight, people did begin to
care. They cared so much, in fact, that they all read the book in
order to find out. And nobody knew even then. It was, however,
something to discuss at boring dinner-parties; so every one was
pleased. Every one but Helena.

Reading the book afresh, she was astounded, terrified, to see how near
it was to life. She had thought it all altered beyond recognition:
fiction merely based on fact. But now she realised that all the parts
of it which mattered--Zoe's ambitions, her husband's repression--were
true, truer than she ever knew indeed: whilst all the
variations--names, place, ages, children, work--made no real difference
at all. In all life it is the soul alone that matters, for there lies
happiness and all those others are mere accidents. And the soul of Zoe
was the soul of Helena; the life of Helena, the life of Zoe. Reading
her book, she realised for the first time her life.

Daily the thing became more of a nightmare.

Hubert, of course, noticed nothing: but Geoffrey Alison grew weary of
her constant admonitions as to silence.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Zoe," he cried at last (for he was getting
almost husbandly in his remarks, encouraged by their common secret),
"do try and get rid of the idea that 'all is discovered