e time for your _edition de luxe_ is not yet."

"Yet? But--you don't think Adrian's work is going to die?"

She looked at him tragically. He reassured her.

"Certainly not. Our future sumptuous edition will be a sign that he is
among the immortals. But an _edition de luxe_ now would be a wanton _Hic
jacet_."

All of this may have been a bit sophistical, but it was sound business
from the publisher's point of view, and conveyed through the medium of
Wittekind's unaffected urbanity it convinced Doria. I listened to her
account of it with a new moon of a smile across my soul--or across
whatever part of oneself one smiles with when one's face is constrained
to immobility.

"I'm so glad I plucked up courage to come and see you, Mr. Wittekind,"
she said. "I feel much happier. I'm quite content to leave Adrian's
reputation in your hands. I wish, indeed, I had come to see you before."
"I wish you had," said he.

"Mr. Chayne has been most kind; but--"

"Jaffery Chayne isn't you," he laughed. "But all the same, he's a
splendid fellow and an admirable man of business."

"In what way?" she asked, rather coldly.

"Well--so prompt."

"That's the very last word I should apply to him. He took an
unconscionable time," said Doria.

"He had a very difficult and delicate work of revision to do. Your
husband's work was a first draft. The novel had to be pulled together.
He did it admirably. That sort of thing takes time, although it was a
labour of love."

"It merely meant writing in bits of scenes. Oh, Mr. Wittekind," she
cried, reverting to an old grievance, "I do wish I could see exactly
what he wrote and what Adrian wrote. I've been so worried! Why do your
printers destroy authors' manuscripts?"

"They don't," said Wittekind. "They don't get them nowadays. They print
from a typed copy."

"'The Greater Glory' was printed from my husband's original manuscript."

Wittekind smiled and shook his head. "No, my dear Mrs. Boldero. From two
typed copies--one in England and one in America."

"Mr. Chayne told me that in order to save time he sent you Adrian's
original manuscript with his revisions."

"I'm sure you must have misunderstood him," said Wittekind. "I read the
typescript myself. I've never seen a line of your husband's manuscript."

"But 'The Diamond Gate' was printed from Adrian's manuscript."

"No, no, no. That, too, I read in type."

Doria rose and the colour fled from her cheeks and her great dark eyes
grew