Miles had retained his room downstairs, much as it was, except that she saw it was kept in some sort of order for him. Her own tiny living quarters were not enough comfortably for two, and she had foreseen that he would have many a spell when he wanted to be quite alone. To her mind he was very chivalrous in hiding his low-spirited moments from her. When he left her early after dinner to spend the evening and the night in his room, she knew that it was a signal for one of these. He was working off some disappointment, some mood of defeat. These troubles had generally fled by morning. He would be in her bedroom, before she woke up, noisy and hungry, and full of jokes. “You’re making me too happy to write,” he told her on one such occasion, as he sat on her bedside and put her hand to his lips. “You remember Rossetti says: “By thine own tears thy song must tears beget O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none Except thy manifest heart and save thine own Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.” He had the old-fashioned way of reading poetry, intoning it without much shading or expression--and he threw himself into it. She thought nobody was just like him when he did that entirely for his own pleasure. “But he speaks of ardour as well as anguish,” she objected. “Yes, I suppose poetry itself does not have to be sad. But it comes out of something like sadness. Rossetti was right. It is as foolish to write poetry in the midst of happiness as to try to find words for what you look like now--when I can be looking at you instead. How beautiful you are when you wake.” It occurred to Moira that she might be a little distressed over all this. She wanted him to be happy, but she also wanted him to write--and become famous or at least deserve it in her eyes. But her good sense brushed his idle words aside. Why encourage harbouring such notions? She had never known any one who spoke his mind aloud so continuously as he did, and she knew that many of the things he said simply passed through it aimlessly. They were without significance except the significance of always tossing up other thoughts, and still others, until the right one came. This thinking aloud had a ruthless quality that would have hurt a more sensitive wife. It did not trouble her. She decided there was no hurry about his getting to work. She did not want him to do it until he could do his best. Nothing less than that she wished to foster. They were living their lives to the full, now, through each other. In good time they would branch out and live in wider circles. Miles was storing up treasures that would find utterance one of these days. Indeed he was writing--slight, experimental things which she did not like, it was true, but which would help to open up the dried springs of his invention. This period of his life was certainly not less promising than the five years before she had met him, arid years of picking up a mere living by critical trifles.