he did for
the "Morning Telegraph." His editors were by no means satisfied. If only
he could write columns and paragraphs as Laura wrote them. But he
couldn't really write them properly at all. And the dreadful irony of it
was that when he ought to be writing paragraphs, poems would come; and
that when he was writing poems he would have to leave off, as often as
not, to finish a paragraph.

Laura said to herself that she was going to make an end of all that.

Her gift was so small that it couldn't in any way crown him; there was
no room on his head for anything besides his own stupendous crown. But,
if she couldn't put it on his head, her poor gift, she could lay it, she
could spread it out at his feet, to make his way softer. He had praised
it; he had said that in its minute way it was wonderful and beautiful;
and to her the beauty and the wonder of it were that, though it was so
small, it could actually make his gift greater. It could actually
provide the difficult material conditions, sleep and proper food, an
enormous leisure and a perfect peace.

She was a little sore as she thought how she had struggled for years to
get things for poor Papa, and how he had had to do without them. And she
consoled herself by thinking, after all, how pleased he would have been
if he had known; and how fond he had been of Owen, and how nice Owen had
always been to him.

One evening she brought all the publishers' letters and the cheques, and
laid them before Owen as he sat in gloom.

"It looks as if we were going to make lots of money."

"We!"

"Yes, we; you and I. Isn't it funny?"

"I don't think it's funny at all," said Owen. "It might be--a little
funny, if I made it and not you."

"Darling--that would be funnier than anything."

Her laughter darted at him, sudden and sweet and shrill, and it cut him
to the heart. His gravity was now portentous.

"The beauty of it is," she persisted, defying all his gravity, "that,
if I can go on, you won't have to make it. And I shall go on, I feel
it; I feel myself going. I've got a dream, Owen, such a beautiful
dream. Some day, instead of sitting there breaking your heart over
those horrid paragraphs, instead of rushing down to Fleet Street in
the rain and the sleet and the fog, you shall ramp up and down here,
darling, making poems, and it won't matter if you wear the carpet
out, if you wear ten carpets. You shall make poems all day long, and
you--shall--never--write--another--pa