He was perfectly wide awake now; he had seen Prothero; and the sight of Prothero revived in him his one idea. His idea was that every man who saw Laura would want to pick the little thing up and carry her away from him. He was haunted by the fear of losing Laura. He had lost everything he had and had forgotten it; but a faint memory of disaster persisted in his idea. "What are you going to do with my little girl?" he said. "You're not going to take her away? I won't have that. I won't have that." "Isn't he funny?" said Laura, unabashed. And from where she knelt, there on the verge of her terror, she looked up at the young man and laughed. She laughed lest Prothero should feel uncomfortable. Nina had risen for departure, and with a slow, reluctant movement of his long body, Prothero rose too. Nina could have sworn that almost he bowed his head over Laura's hand. "May I come and see you again some day?" he said. And she said she would be very glad. That was all. Outside in the little dull street he turned to Nina. "It wasn't fair, Nina; you didn't tell me I was going to have my heart wrung." "How could I know," she said fiercely, "what would wring your heart?" He looked away lest he should seem to see what was in her. But she knew he saw. XXV Three weeks passed. Prothero had been four times to see Miss Gunning. He had been once because she said he might come again; once because of a book he had promised to lend her; once because he happened to be passing; and once for no reason whatsoever. It was then borne in on him that what he required was a pretext. Calling late one evening he caught Miss Gunning in the incredible double act of flinging off a paragraph for the papers while she talked to Mr. Gunning. His pretext, heaven-sent, unmistakable, stared him in the face. He could not write paragraphs for the papers (they wouldn't take his paragraphs), but he could talk to Mr. Gunning. It was not so difficult as he would have at first supposed. He had already learnt the trick of it. You took a chair. You made a statement. Any statement would do. You had only to say to Mr. Gunning, "Isn't that so?" and he would bow and assure you, with a solemn courtesy, that it was, and sit up waiting patiently for you to do it again; and you went on talking to Miss Gunning until he showed signs of restlessness. When you had done this several times running he would sink back in his chair appeased. But Prothero had discovered that if you concentrated your attention on Mr. Gunning, if you exposed him to a steady stream of statements, he invariably went to sleep; and while he slept Laura wrote. And while Laura wrote, Owen could keep on looking at her as much as he liked.