l be the
money too and any one can do with that."

"Yes," said Helena, clinging to an earlier sentence, as women will,
"but the manuscript gives it away hopelessly that I'm an author's wife,
on almost every page."

"Well, how many authors do you think there are?" he said; then with the
Tempter's fluency, "and they notoriously marry more than any one. Who
in the world could guess? Every one would think that it was by a man.
They always do if anybody writes a very intimate peep at a woman's
soul." He smiled, remembering how intimate the peep in question
sometimes was. "Fancy reading all their silly guesses! Come on! You
can't be so selfish!"

Her eyes glistened and she moved on to an earlier point. "It wouldn't
really bring much money, would it?" she asked. "Books don't seem to,
ever."

"Blatchley--that's the publisher--thinks it would sell like anything:
he says it's new. That's why he wants it. There isn't any sentiment
in Blatchley. He's right, too: people love these human documents. I
dare say it'd bring in several hundred pounds."

Helena gasped. He had offered her the proper fruit at last, this
worried little child of Eve, who, feigning to cut down the household
bills, had long time satisfied a husband intolerant of change by
drawing on her bank account, now perilously near its end.

"What should I call myself?" she answered simply. Several hundred
pounds--and all the fun as well!

He thought a moment. "Not Helena," he said with firmness. "They'd
guess. Besides no authoress could ever be called Helena: it sounds
like Eleanor after a careless housemaid's accident."

"Joan is my second name," she answered humbly.

"Joan," he repeated, and she felt quite ashamed already: he made it
sound so long and flat. "No, no; not Joan. That is like Jones with
the last letter dropped. It must be something literary. I know." He
hesitated, as though weighing the discovered nugget: then, satisfied;
"We'll call you Zoe Baskerville."

"Splendid!" she laughed. Already this was a new interest in life.
Then a doubt struck her. "_Are_ those literary names? Who were they
both?"

"I'm blest if I know," he confessed; "but I've seen both in
catalogues." So that was settled.

"I never liked Helena for you," he said. "Zoe is just the name. I
shall always think of you as Zoe." Then, greatly daring, with a swift
rush; "May I call you Zoe?"

He felt as though he were upon the absolute edge of his chair,