hose who have ears
to hear; suppose you've taken the whole thing down almost at dictation!
I don't know how your story goes on, Miss Brabazon----"

"No more do I," said Miss Brabazon, manifestly impressed and not at all
offended by his theory. "It's a queer thing--I never should have thought
of such a thing myself--but I certainly did dash it all off as if
somebody was telling me what to say, and at such a rate that my mind's
still a blank from one page to the next."

She picked the script out of her lap, and we watched her bewildered
face as it puckered to a frown over the rustling sheets.

"I shouldn't wonder," said Delavoye a little hastily, "if his next
effort wasn't to subvert her religious beliefs."

"To make game of them!" assented Miss Julia in scandalised undertones.
"'The demoniacal Duke now set himself to deface and destroy the beauty
of holiness, to cast away the armour of light, and to put upon him the
true colours of an aristocratic atheist of the deepest dye.'"

"Exactly what he did," murmured Uvo, with another look at me. It was not
a look of triumph unalloyed; it was at least as full of vivid
apprehension.

"I shall cross that out," said Miss Julia decidedly. "I don't know what
I was thinking of to write anything like that. It really makes me almost
afraid to go on."

Uvo shot out a prompt and eager hand.

"Will you let me take it away to finish by myself, Miss Brabazon?"

"I don't think I can. I must look and see if there's anything more like
that."

"But it isn't your fault if there is. You've simply been inspired to
write the truth."

"But I feel almost ashamed."

And the typewritten sheets rustled more than ever as she raised them
once more. But Delavoye jumped up and stood over her with a stiff lip.

"Miss Brabazon, you really must let me read the rest of it to myself!"

"I must see first whether I can let anybody."

"Let me see instead!"

Heaven knows how she construed his wheedling eagerness! There was a
moment when they both had hold of the MS., when I felt that my friend
was going too far, that his obstinate persistence could not fail to be
resented as a liberty. But it was just at such moments that there was a
smack of greatness about Uvo Delavoye; given the stimulus, he could
carry a thing off with a high hand and the light touch of a born leader;
and so it must have been that he had Miss Julia coyly giggling when I
fully expected her to stamp her foot.

"You talk about