"You _are_ funny," she said lazily from her armchair, like some one who claps in the stalls. He looked slightly hurt. "You always say that if I'm serious," he protested. Then less plaintively, as though heartened by what was to come: "As a matter of fact though, I've done you a very good turn." "Me?" asked Helena, as he made an effective pause and there seemed nothing else to say. She couldn't thank, in case it really was a joke. "Yes, you. Your silly manuscript, as you like to call it, is good--jolly good. I don't suppose you realise that, do you? It's something original, these days, and that is everything. It's----" "I'm glad it amused you," Helena said, thinking that he had quitted himself well and now she must help him out; "but----" "But where's the good turn?" he broke in, interpreting her wrongly. "Well, I'll tell you. I showed it--I knew you wouldn't mind----" (and here he looked a little timidly at her sideways), "I showed it to a publisher I've met about, a very decent fellow----" "How dare you?" Helena flashed out youthfully, just as though they were playing Interruptions. "I lent it you to read and I think----" He kept up the game. "Listen," he said with a firmness rare in him, confident of what he had to tell. "He said it was new and vital and had money in it: those are his exact words; and he wants to publish it if you can think of a good ending. There!" At last it was out and he stood complacent, waiting for her thanks: but she was not even appeased. "I don't care _what_ he said," she cried, and for this moment of her childish anger it was true. "I only know I lent it you and not to him; do you think I want everybody reading all my diaries?" "But it was not a diary," he answered, keeping his head clear, "and he had no idea of course who wrote it." "He would, though, if he published it." She thought that she had crushed him; but he merely gained fresh hope, seeing her dally thus with the idea. "Never," he replied dramatically. "Nobody will ever know except yourself and me." Before that masterly touch, "will," she crumpled up, and fell back on a new line of defence. "I can't believe," she said, more peaceable, "he's serious. I know quite well, and so do you, it's nothing: just to make the time go while I was alone. I took no trouble: wrote it any odd old time." "You surely don't imagine," he said, "writers really have to wait for times and seasons and the proper mood? They could work ten to six like anybody else, except it wouldn't be artistic. Do you imagine nothing's good unless it's written with a lobelia in front of you and all that sort of thing? Some of the world's best stuff has come out of an attic. The whole thing's nothing but a pose." She had her answer about Hubert, without asking. Geoffrey Alison, two years discreet, had suddenly begun to throw bricks in this happy home, and never even heard the crash. "Oh," she said, lingering on the syllable till it grew into three.