aid;
and now she wouldn't have to work. No, never again. And when she asked
him if he liked to see her sitting with her hands before her, doing
nothing, he said that was precisely what he did like. And it had been
all very well so long as he had been there to see her. But now he wasn't
ever there.

It was worse than it was down in Sussex. All morning he shut himself up
in his study to write. After lunch he went up there again to smoke. Then
he would go out by himself, and he might or might not come in for
dinner. All evening he shut himself up again and wrote. At midnight or
after he would come to her, worn out, and sleep, lying like a dead man
at her side.

She was startled by the sound of the postman's knock and the flapping
fall of a letter in the letter-box. It was for Tanqueray, and she took
it up to him and laid it beside him without a word. To speak would have
been fatal. He had let his fire go out (she knew he would); so, while he
was reading his letter, she knelt down by the hearth and made it up
again. She went to work very softly, but he heard her.

"What are you doing there?" he said.

"I thought," said she, "I was as quiet as a mouse."

"So you were. Just about. A horrid little mouse that keeps scratching at
the wainscot and creeping about the room and startling me."

"Do I startle you?"

"You do. Horribly."

Rose put down the poker without a sound.

He had finished his letter and had not begun writing again. He was only
looking at his letter. So Rose remarked that lunch was ready. He put the
letter into a drawer, and they went down.

About half-way through lunch he spoke.

"Look here," he said, "you _must_ keep out of the room when I'm
writing."

"You're always writing now."

Yes. He was always writing now; because he did not want to talk to Rose
and it was the best way of keeping her out of the room. But as yet he
did not know that was why, any more than he knew that he had come to
live in London because he wanted to talk to Jinny. The letter in his
drawer up-stairs was from Jinny, asking him if she might not come and
see his wife. He was not sure that he wanted her to come and see his
wife. Why should she?

"You'll 'urt your brain," his wife was saying, "if you keep on
writ-writin', lettin' the best of the day go by before you put your foot
out of doors. It would do you all the good in the world if you was to
come sometimes for a walk with me----"

It all went in at one ear and out o