Stephen got up, stretched, and went to the window. The sun had retreated behind the clouds; a kind of brown twilight hung over the Embankment, for the wind had now dropped and a fog was threatening. The discouragement common to all fine writers was upon her, she was hating what she had written. Last night’s work seemed inadequate and unworthy; she decided to put a blue pencil through it and to rewrite the chapter from start to finish. She began to give way to a species of panic; her new book would be a ludicrous failure, she felt it, she would never again write a novel possessing the quality of _The Furrow_. _The Furrow_ had been the result of shock to which she had, strangely enough, reacted by a kind of unnatural mental vigour. But now she could not react any more, her brain felt like over-stretched elastic, it would not spring back, it was limp, unresponsive. And then there was something else that distracted, something she was longing to put into words yet that shamed her so that it held her tongue-tied. She lit a cigarette and when it was finished found another and kindled it at the stump. ‘Stop embroidering that curtain, for God’s sake, Puddle. I simply can’t stand the sound of your needle; it makes a booming noise like a drum every time you prod that tightly stretched linen.’ Puddle looked up: ‘You’re smoking too much.’ ‘I dare say I am. I can’t write any more.’ ‘Since when?’ ‘Ever since I began this new book.’ ‘Don’t be such a fool!’ ‘But it’s God’s truth, I tell you—I feel flat, it’s a kind of spiritual dryness. This new book is going to be a failure, sometimes I think I’d better destroy it.’ She began to pace up and down the room, dull-eyed yet tense as a tightly drawn bow string. ‘This comes of working all night,’ Puddle murmured. ‘I must work when the spirit moves me,’ snapped Stephen. Puddle put aside her wool work embroidery. She was not much moved by this sudden depression, she had grown quite accustomed to these literary moods, yet she looked a little more closely at Stephen and something that she saw in her face disturbed her. ‘You look tired to death; why not lie down and rest?’ ‘Rot! I want to work.’ ‘You’re not fit to work. You look all on edge, somehow. What’s the matter with you?’ And then very gently: ‘Stephen, come here and sit down by me, please, I must know what’s the matter.’ Stephen obeyed as though once again they two were back in the old Morton schoolroom, then she suddenly buried her face in her hands: ‘I don’t want to tell you—why must I, Puddle?’ ‘Because,’ said Puddle, ‘I’ve a right to know; your career’s very dear to me, Stephen.’ Then suddenly Stephen could not resist the blessèd relief of confiding in Puddle once more, of taking this great new trouble to the faithful and wise little grey-haired woman whose hand had been stretched out to save in the past. Perhaps yet again that hand might find the strength that was needful to save her.