The cat had finished its toilet and jumped down again into the herbaceous bed. Philip heard a faint mew, and his awaking imagination told him that Tommy had cut his foot already. With a spasm of remorse he ran out into the garden and began a frenzied search for the razor-blade which with such culpable carelessness he had thrown away. A quarter of an hour’s search was rewarded by its discovery, and as there was no blood on the edge of it he thankfully assumed that he had not been punished (nor Tommy either) for his thoughtlessness. He unfortunately stepped on a fine calceolaria, and regained the gravel path with the blade in his hand. He locked it up in the drawer of his knee-hole table, where he kept his will and his pass-book and his cheque book, and with a free mind returned to Eva, perilously voyaging on the ice past the woods of Richmond, and praying that she should be “in time.” But suddenly, and for the first time in their dual and prosperous career as _feuilleton_ writers, Philip found himself finding a certain want of actuality in Phœbe’s imaginings. They lacked the bite of such realism as he had found illustrated in the poignancy of his own search for the discarded razor-blade in the herbaceous border. There was emotion, real human emotion, though only concerned with the paws of a cat and a razor, whereas Eva’s taper fingers on the tiller of this remarkable craft seemed to want the solidity of mortal experience. But it would never do to lose faith in Phœbe’s inventions, for it was his faith in them that lent him his unique skill as interpreter and chronicler of them. And, anyhow, the razor-blade was safely inaccessible now to any cat on its pleasure excursions, and he turned his mind back to the woods of Richmond. With the unexpectedness of a clock loudly chiming, his imagination began to work again. What if he should suddenly die even as he sat there at his table! Phœbe alone knew where his will was kept, and he saw her, blind with tears, unlocking the drawer and groping with trembling hand among its contents. Suddenly she would start back with a cry of pain, and withdraw her hand, on which the fast-flowing blood denoted that she had severed an artery or two, and would bleed to death in a few seconds, as had happened to a most obnoxious Marquis in the tale, “Kind hearts are more than coronets.” Next moment he had unlocked the drawer, and gingerly holding the dread instrument of Phœbe’s death between finger and thumb, looked wildly round for some secure asylum for the hateful thing. Long he stood there in hesitation; then, mounting a set of “library steps,” deposited it on the top of the tall bookcase which held the complete file of all the newspapers in which their tales had appeared. Then he set to work again on Eva, who presently ran her ice-boat ashore below the Star and Garter hotel. But half the morning had already gone, and he had scarcely yet made a beginning of the morning’s work.