In imagination she had seen herself seated quietly in the room while he wrote, sewing, or perhaps with a book. When first she made this dream reality, and tiptoed into the room, he spoke impatiently, and without raising his head.

“Yes, what is it!”

“It’s all right,” she said in a low, soothing voice that she would have assumed when speaking to a sick person. “It’s only me.”

He looked up then, and his frown disappeared.

“Oh, you, darling! What do you want?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’ve just brought my work in here. Don’t stop writing. I shan’t talk to you.”

He watched her sit down on the sofa. There was a doubtful look in his eyes, but she did not see it. After a few moments he bent again over his paper, and went on writing.

She was morbidly anxious to make no sound, therefore she sneezed, stifling it to a tiny noise in her throat. Again Stephen looked up, amused.

“Darling, what a funny little noise! What was it?”

“A sneeze,” she said. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“How awfully conscientious! ’Lisbeth, if that’s one of my socks, give it to Nana! I don’t want you to slave over my things.”

“I’m not. Stephen, if you talk to me I shall feel I’m hindering you.”

He went on with his work, but he wrote more slowly now, and spasmodically. In the pauses between the hurried scratching of his pen he stared out of the window, chin in hand. Elizabeth watched him covertly.

“The lawn wants mowing,” Stephen said, absent-mindedly.

“I’m afraid you’re not getting on very fast,” she replied, in some concern. “Does my being here worry you?”

“Not in the least. The only thing that worries me is Geoffrey. I’m not at all sure that I shan’t give him another name.”

“Is Geoffrey your hero?” she said.

He made a grimace.

“You little horror! It sounds .like a Victorian melodrama.”

“What does?” she said, bewildered. “Hero?”

“Of course. One pictures a golden-haired and blue-eyed young colossus, with the strength of a lion and the face and bearing of an archangel. Don’t ask me what my ‘villain’ is like!”

“But if you don’t call him your ‘hero,’ what are you to call him?”

“Geoffrey. No, Norman. God, what an inspiration! Norman! It’s perfect. It changes the whole disposition of the man. Elizabeth dear, go and pick flowers, or feed the fowls, or bathe in the stream. I’m going to tear all this up and start afresh.”

She gathered up her work.

“I’m worrying you? You’d rather I went?”

He had pulled fresh paper towards him, and was scribbling fast.

“No, dearest, but I shan’t be pleasant company until I’ve started Norman in life, so you’d better go. I don’t want to bore you.”