hose single women of the present day whose intellectual interests
are enough for them, who have never really felt the call of passion,
and can be trusted to look at life sensibly without taking love and
marriage into account. To think of Miss Bremerton as having suffered
severely from a love-affair--broken her heart, and injured her
health over it--was most distracting. If it had happened once--why,
of course, it might happen again. She was not immune; in spite of
all her gifts, she was susceptible, and it was a horrid nuisance.

He went home all on edge, what with the adventure of the gates, the
encounter with the engineer fellow, and now the revelations of the
Rector.

As he approached the house, he saw from the old clock in the gable
of the northern front that it was two o'clock. He was half-an-hour
late for lunch. Luncheon, in fact, must be over. And indeed, as he
passed along the library windows, he saw Elizabeth's figure at her
desk. It annoyed him that she should have gone back to work so soon
after her meal. He had constantly made it plain to her that she was
not expected to begin work of an afternoon till four o'clock. She
would overdo it: and then she would break down again as she had done
before. In his selfishness, his growing dependence on her
companionship and her help, he began to dread the mere chance.

How agreeable, and how fruitful, their days of work had been lately!
He had been, of course, annoyed sometimes by her preoccupation with
the war news of the morning. Actually, this Caporetto business, the
Italian disaster, had played the mischief with her for a day or
two--and the news from Russia. Any bad news, indeed, seemed to haunt
her; her colour faded away; and if he dictated notes to her, they
would be occasionally inaccurate. But that was seldom. In general,
he felt that he had made great strides during the preceding weeks;
that, thanks to her, the book he was attempting was actually coming
into shape. She had suggested so much--sometimes by her knowledge,
sometimes by her ignorance. And always so modest--so teachable--so
docile.

_Docile_? The word passing through his mind again, as it had in the
morning, roused in him mingled laughter and uneasiness. For outside
their classical work together, nothing indeed could be less docile
than Miss Bremerton. How she had withstood him in the matter of the
codicil! He could see her still, as she stood there with her hands
behind her, defying him. And t