He stared ruefully. "No, indeed! Not if I'm to write a chapter a day." "Oh, the chapter a day, please! Get the novel done at the earliest moment possible; that's the chief thing. You will, won't you? I should be so grateful to you if you finished it in six weeks." "I promise to finish it as quickly as I can," he said. "Even if I didn't care to serve you, I should do that, for my own sake. When I get two hundred pounds, I shall be at the end of my troubles." "Happy man!" said Mrs. Deane-Pitt. "Would that two hundred pounds would see the end of mine! And as you do want to serve me, you'll do it even more quickly than you can?" "Or try." "That's very nice of you. I wonder how true it is. One of the answers one has to make, isn't it? Then when you're behind with the work, and your wife wants to be taken out somewhere, you'll nobly remember there's a miserable woman in Victoria Street depending on you and persuade Mrs. Kent to go with a sister, or a cousin, or an aunt? You'll say to yourself 'Excelsior!' and other improving mottoes, meaning 'Loyalty forbids'?" "I'll say 'Loyalty forbids' when I want to go out by myself; my wife's in the country." "Tant mieux! if it isn't shocking," she laughed. "I'm afraid a woman on the spot would prove too strong for me. Am I grossly selfish? Poor boy who has got no wife!" She looked at him as she had looked across the supper-table in the avenue Wagram. He could not think of anything to say, of a nature that commended itself to him; and he exclaimed abruptly: "Oh, you may rely on me, Mrs. Deane-Pitt; I'll never go anywhere; I'll be a hermit! By the way, you don't know I'm in Soho now. Perhaps I'd better give you the address?" "Certainly," she said; "I may want to write to you. The Hermit of Soho! Well, when you've been good and done penance thoroughly, hermit, you may come and see me sometimes; I'll allow you that distraction. Come in whenever you like, and you can tell me how the thing is going. Any afternoon you please at this time. And don't come in trembling at me any more; I don't expect you to write me a masterpiece in six weeks, poor boy."