and plates on the tray.

"Sorry you catch me like this, Elsie," he said, with a little
laugh.... "No, I'll take them out; then we'll go for a walk, if you
like...."

He carried out the tray, and then began to show Miss Bengough round his
flat. She made few comments. In the kitchen she asked what an old faded
square of reddish frieze was, that Mrs. Barrett used as a cushion for her
wooden chair.

"That? I should be glad if you could tell _me_ what it is," Oleron
replied as he unfolded the bag and related the story of its finding in
the window-seat.

"I think I know what it is," said Miss Bengough. "It's been used to wrap
up a harp before putting it into its case."

"By Jove, that's probably just what it was," said Oleron. "I could make
neither head nor tail of it...."

They finished the tour of the flat, and returned to the sitting-room.

"And who lives in the rest of the house?" Miss Bengough asked.

"I dare say a tramp sleeps in the cellar occasionally. Nobody else."

"Hm!... Well, I'll tell you what I think about it, if you like."

"I should like."

"You'll never work here."

"Oh?" said Oleron quickly. "Why not?"

"You'll never finish _Romilly_ here. Why, I don't know, but you won't.
I know it. You'll have to leave before you get on with that book."

He mused for a moment, and then said:

"Isn't that a little--prejudiced, Elsie?"

"Perfectly ridiculous. As an argument it hasn't a leg to stand on. But
there it is," she replied, her mouth once more full of the large-headed
hat pins.

Oleron was reaching down his hat and coat. He laughed.

"I can only hope you're entirely wrong," he said, "for I shall be in a
serious mess if _Romilly_ isn't out in the autumn."

IV

As Oleron sat by his fire that evening, pondering Miss Bengough's
prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he came to the
conclusion that it would have been far better had she kept her beliefs to
herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence damped at
the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a sense to make them.
Speech itself becomes a deterrent act, to which other discouragements
accrete until the very event of which warning is given is as likely as
not to come to pass. He heartily confounded her. An influence hostile
to the completion of _Romilly_ had been born.

And in some illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had attached
this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever