It was with a shock sometimes that she found herself making a minute analysis of her husband’s mental condition with a degree of calmness, of interest even, at which she could only wonder. In the meantime, as far as outward interests and preoccupations were concerned, she made haste to fill her life. In her determination to do this she had never wavered since her talk with Mayne. The hours _must_ be filled. So far as occupation went, she could and would “pull herself together.” She began to look up her old friends, and found them more than willing to receive her. Cecily had always been popular, and her husband was beginning to be well known, and probably, also, beginning to grow rich. Whether she owed her immediate acceptance to the memory of her own former charm, or to the more tangible advantages she now offered as the wife of a popular novelist, Cecily wisely did not inquire. She wanted acquaintances. She could have them for the asking. And she was grateful for one friend. Mayne was living at his club while he considered at his leisure a fresh campaign of exploration. He and Cecily saw one another frequently. But it was not till she took his incessantly urged advice and began to write, that she felt that any of her methods of filling the hours were more than husks which she ate for lack of good bread. Often on looking back to the day when she first took up her work again, she thought with wonder of the occasion. It was the day Robert had expressed his desire to employ the services of Philippa Burton as secretary. Rather to Cecily’s surprise he had been in to lunch. It was nearly a month, she reflected, since such a thing had happened, and her surprise deepened when, instead of going directly the meal was at an end, he asked for coffee, and lighted a cigarette. For a time he talked disjointedly on indifferent topics, bringing the conversation round at last to his work and its many vexations. “I’ve got more than I can do,” he declared, with a worried frown. “Brough is bothering for those short stories, and there’s my new novel, and the play, and half my time’s taken up with business letters and all the machinery of the thing.” He paused as if in thought. “I really think a secretary would pay me,” he exclaimed presently. “Why not have one, then?” asked Cecily, taking a cigarette from the box between them. “I don’t know how to---- What about Miss Burton?” he suggested, concluding the hesitating sentence sharply, as though the idea had just occurred to him. “She does shorthand, and she’s very hard up, poor girl. She was at Lady Wilmot’s yesterday when I called.” Cecily lighted her cigarette, and walked with it to the window-seat, where she sat down with her back to the light. “And you suggested it to her?” she asked. “No. I had no opportunity of speaking to her.” A hysterical desire to laugh seized her. She controlled it, grasping with her left hand the corner of the cushion on which she sat, and was silent.