The thought reminded her once more of the object of his visit—or at least of hers in sending for him, and she said: "But you've brought a lot of things with you, haven't you? I hope so. I want so much to see them."

"Manuscripts?" He shook his head. "No, not much. But I'm going to write a lot of new stuff here." He got to his feet and stood leaning against the mantelshelf, looking down at her with eyes which, mortifyingly enough, seemed to include her as merely part of the furniture. "What is he really seeing at this moment?" she wondered. Aloud she said: "But my husband wrote you were to be sure to bring everything you'd written. He's so much interested … we both think 'One Day' so wonderful. I understood he'd asked you to bring all the stories and articles The Hour had rejected. You see it's in new hands—my husband's—and he means to pursue a much broader policy… ." (Why was she talking like a magazine prospectus? she asked herself.)

Vance Weston shook his head. "I didn't bring any of those old things; they're no good. The Hour was dead right to refuse them."

"Oh—" she exclaimed, surprised and interested. It was a new sound in that room—the voice of honest self-disparagement! She looked at him with a rising eagerness, noting again the breadth of his forehead, and the bold upward cut of the nostrils, and the strong planting of his thickish nose between the gray eyes, set so deeply and widely apart.

"Authors are not always the best judges. Perhaps what you think no good might be just what a critic would admire."

"No, that man Frenside's a critic, isn't he? Anyhow, the objections he made were right every time; I know they were." He spoke firmly, but without undue humility. "My head's always full of subjects, of course. But he said I hadn't accumulated enough life-stuff to build 'em with; and I know that's right. And I know I can do a lot better now. That's why I want to get to work at once."

She felt disappointed, foreseeing her husband's disappointment. It would have given him such acute satisfaction to reverse one of Frenside's judgments! "You think by this time you've accumulated the life-stuff?" Her tone was faintly ironical.

"Well," he said with simplicity, "I guess time keeps on doing that—the months and years. They ought to. I'm three years older, and things have happened to me. I can see further into my subjects now."

She noticed the lighting up of his eyes when he began to speak of his writing, and felt herself more remote from him than ever. She longed to know if he remembered nothing of their talks and she rejoined more gently: "I suppose it seems a long time to you since you read your poems to me on Thundertop."