‘I should be proud if I had written a book like this!’ she said. ‘It means--such a lot of--well, of _manliness_, somehow. Thank you. And it is really published at last?’ ‘It is not supposed to be published until next Monday,’ he answered. ‘The reviewers’ copies have gone out to-day, but I insisted on having a copy supplied to me before any one handled another--I wanted you to have the very first.’ ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Because I think you’ll understand it,’ he said; ‘and you’ll read it.’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I shall read it, and I think I shall understand. And now all the lionising will begin.’ Saxonstowe shrugged his shoulders. ‘If the people who really know about these things think I have done well, I shall be satisfied,’ he said. ‘I don’t care a scrap about the reviews in the popular papers--I am looking forward with great anxiety to the criticisms of two or three scientific periodicals.’ ‘You were going to run away from the lionising business,’ she said. ‘When are you going?--there is nothing to keep you, now that the book is out.’ Saxonstowe looked at her. He was standing at the edge of the table on which she had placed the two volumes of his book; she was sitting in a low chair at its side. She looked up at him; she saw his face grow very grave. ‘I didn’t think anything would keep me,’ he said, ‘but I find that something is keeping me. It is you. Do you know that I love you?’ The colour rose in her cheeks, and her eyes left his for an instant; then she faced him. ‘I did not know it until just now,’ she answered, laying her hand on one of the volumes at her side. ‘I knew it then, because you wished me to have the first-fruits of your labour. I was wondering about it--as we talked.’ ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Will you let me be perfectly frank with you?’ she said. ‘Are you sure about yourself in this?’ ‘I am sure,’ he answered. ‘I love you, and I shall never love any other woman. Don’t think that I say that in the way in which I dare say it’s been said a million times--I mean it.’ ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘I understand. You wouldn’t say anything that you didn’t mean. And I am going to be equally truthful with you. I don’t think it’s wrong of me to tell you that I have a feeling for you which I have not, and never had, for any other man that I have known. I could depend on you--I could go to you for help and advice, and I should rely on your strength. I have felt that since we met, as man and woman, a few weeks ago.’ ‘Then----’ he began.