After waiting a day or two she had sent for Frenside, and told him as much of the story as concerned her share in Vance's work, and the intellectual side of their friendship. When she came to the destruction of the manuscript, and to her husband's attitude in the matter, Frenside, who had listened musingly over his pipe, gave a short laugh. "Well, my dear, you have made a mess of it!" She was too much humiliated to protest. "But what can I do now?" she merely asked, and was not unprepared for the "Nothing!" he flung back.

"Oh, Frenny, but I must—"

He shrugged her protest away. "And you know," he went on, "it's not such a bad thing for a young novelist with a demoralizing success behind him to tear up a manuscript or two. Chances are they wouldn't have been much good—just the backwash of the other. He's done the right thing to go off into the country and tackle a new job in new surroundings—without even you to advise him."

She winced, but Frenside's sarcasm was always salutary. "But he can't afford to wait," she said. "He's starving—and with that poor little ill wife. How can I persuade Lewis to let him off his bargain? His only hope is to get an advance from Lambart on his unwritten book, so that he can go off and work quietly, without this dreadful anxiety about money. But I can't make Lewis feel as I do about it… ."

Frenside contemplated his pipe in silence. "Tarrant's writing a novel himself, isn't he? What about—?"

She felt a little shock of apprehension. "Oh, I don't know. He's so secretive. He's never asked me to look at it, and I don't dare suggest … "

Frenside looked at her shrewdly. "Dare—suggest—insist. Get him to let you see what he's done; tell him it's a darned sight better than any of Weston's stuff. If he can be got to believe that—and you ought to know how to make him—he may stop bothering about Weston."

She remained silent while Frenside got up to go. "Look here, my child; get him to read his book to you, and try to think it's a masterpiece. Perhaps it is." But seek as she would she could find no answering pleasantry. She sat helpless, benumbed, while her old friend emptied his pipe, pushed it into his pocket, and reached out for his stick. But as he got to the door she started up and broke out, with a little sob: "All the help I wanted to give him has turned to harm. Oh, Frenny, how am I going to bear it?" Frenside limped back to her and laid his hand for a moment on her shoulder. Then he took off his glasses to give her one deep look. "Bravely," he said, and turned to go.