“But you mustn’t write too much,” I said. “You must have fixed hours, and at a certain time, say at ten o’clock, I shall insist on your ceasing to write for the night.” “That seems a wise arrangement. But sometimes I shall be too entranced in the work, I fancy, to leave it without an effort.” “Ah,” I said, “I shall come behind you, and snatch the pen from your hand!” “Every Saturday night,” he said, “I shall read to you what I have written during the week.” No wonder I loved him. We were married on a September day, and the honeymoon passed delightfully in talk about the book. Nothing proved to me the depth of George’s affection so much as his not beginning the great work before the honeymoon was over. So I often told him, and he smiled fondly in reply. The more, indeed, I praised him the better pleased he seemed to be. The name for this is sympathy. Conceive us at home in our dear little house in Clapham. “Will you begin the book at once?” I asked George the day after we arrived. “I have been thinking that over,” he said. “I needn’t tell you that there is nothing I should like so much, but, on the whole, it might be better to wait a week.” “Don’t make the sacrifice for my sake,” I said, anxiously. “Of course it is for your sake,” he replied. “But it is such a pity to waste any more time,” I said. “There is no such hurry,” he answered, rather testily. I looked at him in surprise. “What I mean,” he said, “is that I can be thinking the arrangement of the book over.” We had, of course, a good many callers at this time, and I told most of them about the book. For reasons to be seen by and by I regret this now. When the week had become a fortnight, I insisted on leaving George alone in the study after dinner. He looked rather gloomy, but I filled the ink-bottles, and put the paper on the desk, and handed him his new pen. He took it, but did not say “thank you.” An hour afterward I took him a cup of tea. He was still sitting by the fire, but the pen had fallen from his hands. “You are not sleeping, George?” I asked. “Sleeping!” he cried, as indignantly as if I had charged him with crime. “No, I’m thinking.” “You haven’t written any yet?” “I was just going to begin when you came in. I’ll begin as soon as I’ve drunk this tea.” “Then I’ll leave you to your work, dear.” I returned to the study at nine o’clock. He was still in the same attitude. “I wish you would bring me a cup of tea,” he said. “I brought you one hours ago.” “Eh? Why didn’t you tell me?” “Oh, George! I talked with you about it. Why, here it is on the table, untouched.” “I declare you never mentioned it to me. I must have been thinking so deeply that I never noticed you. You should have spoken to me.” “But I did speak, and you answered.”