you think of your agent now?"

She did not exhibit the delirious gratitude which he clearly had
expected. She sat, obviously thinking; and he for his part reflected
that women were odd devils, however well you knew them. Surely nobody
could know a woman better than he knew little Zoe; he saw more of her
now than Brett did; talked to her with the direct ease of a
husband--said just what he thought. Hadn't he just told her not to
interrupt? Well, that meant knowing a girl pretty well; yet if any one
had told him that she wouldn't be delighted about this book she wanted
to write so much----

"I shall have to ask Hugh," she said very slowly, breaking in upon his
thoughts.

This was the last word.... Ask Hugh! Ask Brett, who had behaved like
a damned swine about the other book, who wouldn't speak to her except
to snub her, who thought of nothing except his own rotten work! The
girl must be mad!

"Ask him?" he said in amazement.

"I ought to have asked him about the other," she merely replied. "Then
everything would have been quite all right."

"Yes," he assented, mocking; "then you'd have never had your book out,
never had all this success. Everything would have been quite all
right."

"Yes," she said, seriously.

After this there was no argument. He could not bring himself to stay.
It was so asinine. People must go mad when once they married! Oh yes,
he could stay no longer. Ask Hugh, indeed, when she had got the chance
of her whole lifetime! He could guess what Hugh, dear Hugh, would say.

"Well," she said, "if you must really go so early?" She had no
suspicion of his mental turmoil. "And I'll let you know to-morrow
about the new book, when I've asked Hugh."

But he had clapped his green hat on impatiently and strode away. He
knew she would not listen to anything against her husband; she had such
young ideas about that sort of thing; but really!----

Helena, meanwhile, still innocent of the rage she had stirred up in
him, spent the time till lunch in wondering how best to attack her not
easy task. Before Hugh came in, she must have the book in its rough
lines all in her head, so as to convince him that it was mere fiction
and would make people believe at last the other had been meant for
nothing more. Then he would surely not object, and be pleased; or if
not--well, why worry about that? A row, she had decided, could not
hurt like his cold silence. It would be human, anyhow. And what an