Time was when Halo, as a matter of course, would have offered to interview the delinquent. Now she knew better. She had learned that in such matters she could be of use to her husband only indirectly. The very tie she had most counted on in the early days of their marriage—a community of ideas and interests—had been the first to fail her. She knew now that the myth of his intellectual isolation was necessary to Tarrant's pride. Nothing would have annoyed him more than to have her suggest that she might take a look at young Weston's manuscripts. "Of course you could, my dear; it would be the greatest luck for the boy if you would—only, you know, I must reserve my independence of judgment. And if you were to raise false hopes in the poor devil—let yourself be carried away, as I remember you were once by his poetry—it would be a beastly job for me to have to turn him down afterward." She could hear him saying that, and she knew that the satisfaction of asserting his superiority by depreciating what she had praised would outweigh any advantage he might miss by doing so. "Oh, young Weston will keep," she acquiesced indifferently, as Tarrant got up to go.