"When in doubt--work." That was what Repellier had said to him, and that was what he did. For all the next day the quietness and loneliness of his rooms weighed heavily upon him, but burying himself in his last revision of Cordelia's book, he remained at his desk, stoical and determined. Each night, though, oddly enough, before he turned out his lights and went to bed, he wrote to Cordelia. Just why he did this he scarcely knew. His letters were not love-letters in the strict sense of the word, though through them ran a strain of tenderness, alternating with a note of loneliness, that made them seem very beautiful letters to the author of The Silver Poppy, and, perhaps, accounted for more than one sleepless night on her part. She replied to them, sometimes almost against her will, in a note as tender, yet quite as restrained. She complained that she, too, was often lonely there in the Spauldings' big house, and felt that she would not be sorry when they came back once more. She was glad he had returned to his work. And she wanted him to feel that she had never in any way stood between him and his great dreams, and never willingly or knowingly would do so. On the evening of the following Sunday Hartley was interrupted in his task of tying together the pages of his completed manuscript by the appearance of Repellier. He seemed the same old Repellier to Hartley, with the same merry smile and the quiet eyes that had always silently reminded the younger man that he was still young and that youth can never know tranquillity. But about the older man on this occasion, for all his quietness of demeanor, there clung an air of unusual sternness. "Are you busy?" he asked, as he beheld the paper-littered desk. "I only dropped up to borrow a book of yours that you've often spoken of--The Silver Poppy. I've been overworking, they tell me, and for the rest of the week I'm going to loaf." He confessed, as Hartley gladly enough produced the volume, that he had never as yet read it--his days had all been so taken up that he got little time for the newer fiction. But only that morning he had picked up an old newspaper notice of the dramatized story and had been unusually interested by it. "It's rather clever?" Repellier asked, taking the book and skimming through it where he stood. Something in his question seemed almost laughable to the younger man. "It will open your eyes," was all he said, however. "I hope it will," said Repellier, slowly closing the volume and slipping it meditatively into his pocket. Then he looked at the still smiling man and asked: "Are you writing any short stories now?" "Not now; but I want to." "Any verse?" "No--nothing worth while." "Novels?" "Not quite." "Would you like a good plot for one?" "That all depends," answered Hartley, motioning his visitor to an armchair. "Well, let me tell it to you, anyway. Then you can think it over by yourself and see if there's anything in it. May I?" "Indeed, yes."