The McGill professor spoke glowingly about the thoracic section and requested permission to publish it in a journal he edited. The Mayo surgeon offered high praise but pointed out an additional area for discussion that would be of value, which added three weeks of labor to Longwood’s task. The Californian, a jealous pedant with whom he had contended for years, grudgingly conceded the value of the material and added three hair-splitting editorial corrections with which Longwood disagreed and which he ignored.

He wrote with a pen, filling lined paper with a cramped, spidery script. Occasionally now the need for sleep overcame him in the daylight hours when he had finished a stretch of writing on the book, and for the first time in his life he began to stay home from the hospital with frequency, grateful for Bester Kender’s ability to take over.

He felt safe enough now to mention the book to Elizabeth one day at lunch and was touched when she volunteered to type the manuscript, believing that she wished to watch over him. For two days she played at the typewriter like a child with a toy, and on the third morning after twenty minutes she got up and spent a long time before the mirror putting on her hat.

“I promised Edna Brewster I’d go shopping with her, Uncle Harland,” she said, and when he nodded she kissed his cheek.

In a few days it was Bernice Lovett who was ill and needed visiting.

Two mornings later she said Helen Parkinson had insisted that she help the committee planning the new Vincent Club show.

After that her presence was needed by Susan Silberger, Ruth Moore, Nancy Roberts, while the pile of untyped manuscript grew at the side of the typewriter.

He wondered who the man was this time.

The Latin American wasn’t strong enough to keep her steady, he thought, finally justified in his disapproval of Meomartino.

Always she stayed at the apartment a little while and then left, having carefully named the woman with whom she would spend the day. It took him only until the Helen Parkinson morning to figure things out.

“In case your husband calls, you mean,” he said when she told him.

Liz looked at him and then smiled. “Now, don’t you be silly and say things we’d both regret, Uncle Harland,” she said.

“Elizabeth, you came here to help me. Would you like to talk with me about . . . anything? Is there no way I can help you?”

“No,” she said.

Instead of thinking about it he called a secretarial agency and arranged for the services of a part-time typist.