r more than an hour or so each night, but you
can make up for it by staying in bed an hour or two longer. You will
have to work during the day from the pencil notes in Blaze you will
have written during the night, and in the evening, or at any time
you are conscious of my presence, read what you have written during
the day, and leave it by your bedside when you go to bed, that I may
make you correct and alter and suggest--during your sleep.

"Only write on one side of a page, leaving a margin and plenty of
space between the lines, and let it be in copybooks, so that the
page on the left-hand side be left for additions and corrections
from my Blaze notes, and so forth; you'll soon get into the way of
it.

"Then when each copybook is complete--I will let you know--get Leah
to copy it out; she writes a very good, legible business hand. All
will arrange itself....

"And now, get the books and begin reading them. I shall not be ready
to write, nor will you, for more than a month.

"Keep this from everybody but Leah; don't even mention it to Maurice
until I give you leave--not but what's he's to be thoroughly
trusted. You are fortunate in your wife and your friend--I hope the
day will come when you will find you have been fortunate in your

"Martia."

Here follows a list of books, but it has been more or less carefully
erased; and though some of the names are still to be made out, I
conclude that Barty did not wish them to be made public.

* * * * *

Before Roberta was born, Leah had reserved herself an hour every
morning and every afternoon for what she called the cultivation of
her mind--the careful reading of good standard books, French and
English, that she might qualify herself in time, as she said, for
the intellectual society in which she hoped to mix some day; she
built castles in the air, being somewhat of a hero-worshipper in
secret, and dreamt of meeting her heroes in the flesh, now that she
was Barty's wife.

But when she became a mother there was not only Roberta who required
much attention, but Barty himself made great calls upon her time
besides.

To his friends' astonishment he had taken it into his head to write
a book. Good heavens! Barty writing a book! What on earth could the
dear boy have to write about?

He wrote much of th