Her conversation was more startling than ever to the male brain, to-day. "Suppress it on the strength of the first notice? When it's been out two days? And when the notice says there can't be any doubt about its popularity? Suppress it, indeed! What about friend Blatchley?" Helena gave a little sigh of absolute despair. It had been so exciting until now: the little green book, locked away upstairs, and libraries actually buying it before it was out, just in the weird way they did Hubert's and real people's! Now she loathed the book and feared it. There was terror indeed in her very tones. "But you don't think," she said, "they really can ever find out who the writer was? They seem to think it's only a question of time. Mr. Blatchley couldn't be so mean." "My dear Zoë" (he felt bound to soothe her and it was so thrilling to say), "how can they possibly? There isn't any 'they' about it. I'm the only person in the world who knows and I suppose you can trust _me_?" He got up from the sofa whilst speaking and struck an attitude quite close to her, at the last words. "Of course I do, Ally; you're a splendid pal and I know you will never breathe a word. It means a lot to me you see;" and she just pressed his hand. It was not much perhaps, but it meant a great deal to him. _He_ did not loathe the book. CHAPTER XIX BUSINESS Helena's oppression, as of some impending blow, refused to disappear. She could not believe, whatever Geoffrey Alison might say, that their secret could be kept until the end. Every fresh notice of the book caused fresh alarm. With one accord reviewers harped upon the authorship, some of the less reputed papers embarking upon guesses. That, to Mr. Blatchley's genuine delight, began denials. He eagerly collected all of them, and not a month had passed before Geoffrey Alison arrived full of importance and excitement. He came, now, almost daily after five; as often, quite, as in the old days before the garden-scene with Hubert; his mind full of the need to cheer this poor sad Zoë who got no joy at all from her success. Surely as it grew and there was still no prospect of detection, she would begin to think of all the money she was earning and enjoy the praise? He hoped so. "Look at this," he said keenly, waving an extract at her. Her tones were dull. "What is it? Another review?" "No, an advertisement. Awfully clever and suits our game too!" He held it out to her. In bold print it ran thus: "WHO? "Already the wives of the following famous authors have publicly declared that they did NOT write _CONFESSIONS OF AN AUTHOR'S WIFE._" (Here followed a list of eight names.) "Ah! But who did? WHO?" "I don't see it suits us at all," she said without enthusiasm. "Why, it's putting people on the wrong track," he tried to argue. She would not have it. "It's making people want to know when they don't really care a bit," she said with a ripe worldly wisdom quite beyond her years.