Ah, to be sure—his own writing! That was what he'd come about, she supposed, to see her husband? Her husband unluckily was away on business. He had expected Mr. Weston at the office the morning of the day before; she believed Mr. Weston had fixed his own hour for coming. And her husband had waited all the morning, and he hadn't turned up. Her tongue stumbled over the "Mr. Weston"; it sounded stiff and affected; she remembered having called him "Vance" as a matter of course the first time she had seen him, at the Willows. But something made her feel that she was no longer in his confidence, or perhaps it was that he had simply forgotten what friends they had been… . The idea disconcerted her, and made her a little shy. It was as if their parts in the conversation had been reversed. "My husband expected you, but you never came," she repeated, gently reproachful.

No, he said, he hadn't come. He'd meant to, the day before, as soon as his train got to New York; but he hadn't been able to. He stated the fact simply, without embarrassment or regret, and left it at that. Halo felt a slight flatness, an uncertainty as to how to proceed.

"And this morning—?"

"This morning I couldn't either. I called round at the office half an hour ago, but it was closed, and the janitor told me to come here instead."

"Yes, I left word—as my husband's away."

She suddenly perceived that they were still in the middle of the room, exchanging their explanations on the particular figure of the rug where he had been standing when she entered. She signed to him to take one of the armchairs by the fireplace, and herself sank into the other. Twilight had gathered in the corners of the bookwalled room, and the fire flowed more deeply for the shadows. Her visitor leaned to it. "I never saw such a beautiful fire—why, that's real wood!" he exclaimed, and fell on his knees on the hearth, as if to verify the strange discovery.

"Of course. We never burn anything else."

This seemed to surprise him, and he lifted his firelit face to hers. "Because it's so much more beautiful?"

"Because it's alive."

His gaze returned to the hearth. "That's so; it's alive… ." He stretched his hands to the flame, and as she watched him she remembered, a few days before, looking at Lewis's hands as he held them out in the same way, and thinking: "Why isn't he a poet?"

This boy's hands were different: sturdier, less diaphanous, with blunter fingertips, though the fingers were long and flexible. A worker's hand, she thought; a maker's hand. She wondered what he would make.