g the hand, he turned cold water
on it, uttering broken phrases of astonishment and concern.

"Good Lord, how did that happen! As far as I knew I'd ... is this water
too cold? Does that hurt? I can't imagine how on earth ... there; that'll
do--"

"No--one moment longer--I can bear it," she murmured, her eyes closed....

Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one
of his handkerchiefs; but his face did not lose its expression of
perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the
three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an
inch and a half of rusty nail standing in the wood. He himself had opened
the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail; but
there it was....

"It shall come out now, at all events," he muttered, as he went for a
pair of pincers. And he made no mistake about it that time.

Elsie Bengough had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white; but
in her hand was the manuscript of _Romilly_. She had not finished with
_Romilly_ yet. Presently she returned to the charge.

"Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, _ever_ made if you
do not publish this!" she said.

He hung his head, genuinely distressed. He couldn't get that incident of
the nail out of his head, and _Romilly_ occupied a second place in his
thoughts for the moment. But still she insisted; and when presently he
spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something.

"What can I say, Elsie? I can only hope that when you see the new
version, you'll see how right I am. And if in spite of all you _don't_
like her, well ..." he made a hopeless gesture. "Don't you see that I
_must_ be guided by my own lights?"

She was silent.

"Come, Elsie," he said gently. "We've got along well so far; don't let us
split on this."

The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them. She
had been nursing her injured hand, with her eyes once more closed; but
her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as she spoke.

"I can't help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed."

"Hush, Elsie," he murmured soothingly; "you've had a shock; rest for a
while. How could I change?"

"I don't know, but you are. You've not been yourself ever since you came
here. I wish you'd never seen the place. It's stopped your work, it's
making you into a person I hardly know, and it's made me horribly anxious
about you..