“Stephen, I don’t believe he would be.”

“You— Don’t you?” He was interested, and leaned forward in his chair.

“If he was so awfully in love with her—and knew that she loved him, it wouldn’t matter about her money. Make him get some work to do and go out to her.”

“Instead of my original idea of making her do the wooing?”

“Yes. Why not? I’ve read books where the rich girl makes the penniless man marry her, but I’ve never read one where it was the other way round.”

Stephen sat still for a while, pondering it. Then he got up.

“I say, ’Lisbeth, that’s rather a fine notion! I believe I can make something out of it. Thanks awfully for helping! I think I’ll just sketch out a scheme now.” He went back to his desk, and presently his pen began to move, faster and faster.

Elizabeth curled herself up on the sofa and smiled secretly. She watched Stephen’s profile with tenderness in her eyes. She thought, I may not know much about writing a book, but I’m beginning to know a lot about this Man-thing of mine. It gave her a delightful sense of power. It was wonderful that anyone so big and strong could be so helpless and easily influenced.

Her glance travelled to Stephen’s straight shoulders. She was glad they were not rounded from much writing; she would hate him to stoop.

She relaxed into the downy cushions behind her, and started to read. She had long since given up the habit of being unnaturally quiet while Stephen wrote. She had become so used to the scratch of his pen that she paid very little heed to it. He did not seem to mind if she coughed, or made up the fire, so she did both, whenever she felt inclined.

Presently one of the maids came in with the tea. Elizabeth made it herself, and she chinked the cups suggestively. She had discovered that if she called Stephen away from his work he hated it, just as he hated her to bring tea to his desk. But if she said nothing, but started to pour out he was sure to leave his writing and come to the fireside.

He did it to-day. The cloud had gone from his brow, and his eyes were smiling and bright. He sat down on a low stool and began to eat buttered toast from the dish in the hearth. He always ate it like that, promiscuously, and he always put his cup and saucer down on the floor beside him. Elizabeth, from thinking it unseemly, had grown to like the habit. She would never sit on the floor herself, and she would never eat lumps of sugar as Stephen did, out of the bowl, but she found it comfortable when he did so. It seemed cosy and intimate.