to
Kew or somewhere and he'd say; "Blow the evening work!" although she
always said she was not sure they ought. Once, a few months after the
wedding, a reader wrote to him from Surbiton and thanked him for a book
of his he had just read, because he thought it beautiful and full of
inspiriting ideas. Of course she had been immensely pleased, but
Hubert had been more. He had shown it to every one who called for
three weeks, and kept on wondering what sort of person could have
written it, and left it about on tables, and she was sure the servants
read it, and he told Mr. Alison about it twice, until she really began
to wonder whether people wouldn't laugh at him, but didn't say so
because he was so sensitive.

It was always the same, about a good review or anything. Sometimes,
after one, he would ask in a thoughtful, puzzled way; "Why don't we
ever go to a theatre, dear?" but by the next night something had
probably upset him or he forgot, and she never reminded him because he
_did_ work hard--and, as he said, for _her_--and she was really very
happy in their little home, so long as he was not at work.

And then, he was so easily upset.

A bad review had just the opposite effect. He got so violent about the
critics, saying they were men who had failed to create, and any ass
could say that elephants were rotten things but it took God to make
one, and other awful things like that; or else he'd begin thinking who
of his pals read the paper where the criticism was and sometimes
even--if she couldn't stop him--write and tell them why the critic was
so down on him, which she was half afraid they must think very silly;
unless, perhaps, they were clever too, so understood.

Once, too, at the end of the first year, he quite frightened her.

Among their wedding presents, duly numerous and costly--perhaps extreme
in both respects for a suburban home--the one that Helena prized and
used most was an enamelled watch. It was the size, roughly, of a
shilling: deep translucent blue, decked with tiny pearls, and hung from
an appropriate brooch by a thin golden chain. Too thin possibly, for
on arrival home one morning from what she called her marketing, the
little gewgaw, valued for ornament and use alike, was gone. A few
links of the chain hung desolately from a brooch that, robbed of its
purpose, now looked almost vulgar.

Without thinking, without reflecting that no one was allowed to
interrupt him before lunch-time, she f