learned not to look up expectantly at every pause, since she had
realized that to the harassed author, struggling for the one right
phrase, that bright expectancy exercised a deadening effect; and she
never even raised her head when silence fell--the silence in which Owen
weighed and sifted his material, selecting this, rejecting that, and
embodying the result in just the one glowing, clean-cut sentence which
would effectually tell.

But Toni found herself, all unwillingly, handicapped, by her
non-comprehension both of the matter and method of Owen's creative work.

A plain, straightforward story Toni could assimilate easily enough.
Something primitive in her responded, also, to the call of the
world-wide emotions of love, hatred, revenge; but Owen's book dealt with
none of these; and the subtle philosophy, the carefully interwoven
motives of political expediency and half-reluctant patriotism were alike
uninteresting and unintelligible.

Where she did not understand, it was natural she should transcribe
incorrectly; and although it was easy for Owen to revise the typewritten
script after each day's labours, he was perpetually checked in his
stride, as it were, by the necessity of repeating or explaining some
incident or allusion by which Toni was frankly puzzled.

Naturally, too, the girl was nervous; and Owen's habit of striding to
and fro as he dictated made things, as she said desperately to herself,
far worse. In vain she quickened her pace in a wild attempt to keep up
with him. Faster and faster went her pen, more and more indistinct grew
the scribbled words; and in the hour of stress all ideas of spelling and
punctuation took to themselves wings and fled.

But worse even than her comparative failure with the merely mechanical
portion of the work was her mental inability to follow the working of
Owen's mind. Handicapped by the necessity of dictating his book, the
author often found himself at a standstill for some word which eluded
him; and although he encouraged Toni to make suggestions, it was very
seldom that she ventured to do so. The work went badly in consequence.
Owen used to think sometimes that if Toni's mind had been more attuned
to his, if they had shared ideas, had held the same standard in fiction,
he might have gained something from this enforced collaboration; but as
things were it became an irritation, effectually stopping the flow of
his ideas; and although he did his best to keep Toni in igno