"Baby, you silly! Have you thought of a name? _I_ have!" He was still wishing that she had a sense of humour and occasionally made a witty remark. "What?" he asked. "Yours. I want to call him 'Humphrey.' What do you say to it?" "What for? It's ugly. You said so the first time you heard it. I think we might choose something better than that." "But it's yours," she persisted. "I want him called by your name--I do, I do!" She held his hand tightly, and her lips trembled. "If ... if I were ever to lose you, Humphrey, I should like our child to have your name. Don't laugh at me, I can't help feeling that. That night when he was born--oh, that night! shall I ever forget it?--and Dr. Roberts looked across at me and said, 'Well, you have a little son come to see you, Mrs. Kent,' the first thing I thought was, 'We can call him "Humphrey."' I wanted to say it to you when they let you in, but I couldn't, I was so tired; I thought it instead. When nurse brought him over to me, or when he cried, or when I saw him moving under the blanket in the bassinet, I thought, 'There's my other Humphrey!'" He kissed her, and sat staring at the fire, his conscience clamorous. He had not realised that he had grown so dear to her, and the discovery made his own dissatisfaction crueller. He felt a thankless brute, a beast. It seemed to him momentarily that the situation would be much less painful if the disappointment were mutual--if she, too, were discontented with the bargain she had made. To listen to her speaking in such a way, to accept her devotion, knowing how little devotion she inspired in return, stabbed him. He asked himself what he had done that she should love him so fondly. He had not openly neglected her, but secretly he had done it often, and with relief. Had she missed him when he had shut himself in his room, not to write, but to wish that he had never met her? His mind smote him. The question obtruded itself during the following days, but now at least his plea of being busy was always genuine enough; he was writing fiercely. The pile of manuscript to which he added sheet after sheet was heavy and thick. Then there came a morning when he went to bed at three, and rose again at eight, to begin his final chapter, having told the servant to bring him a sandwich and a glass of claret for luncheon. When one o'clock struck, and she entered, tobacco had left him with no appetite and a furred tongue. He threw a "thank you" at her, and remained in the same bent attitude, his pen traversing the paper steadily. He was working with an exaltation which rarely seized him, the exaltation with which the novelist is depicted in fiction as working all the time. His aspect was untidy enough for him to have served as an admirable model for that personage. He had not shaved for three days, and a growth of stubbly beard intensified the haggardness that came of insufficient sleep.