“Yes, I do. What I don’t want is a gaoler.” I was on the sofa when Dr. Kennedy called, the papers on the table beside me. He asked eagerly what I thought of them: “I see you have got at them. Are you disappointed, exhilarated? Are they illuminative? Tell me about them; I want so much to hear.” He had forgotten to ask how I was. “I will tell you about them presently. I haven’t read them all. Up to now they are certainly disappointing, if not dull! They are business letters, to begin with. But it is obvious she is trying to get up something like a flirtation with him.” “Oh, no!” “Oh, yes! I have watched Ella, my sister Mrs. Lovegrove, for years. She is past mistress of the art of flirtation. Sentiment and the appeal of her femininity, a note of unhappiness and the suggestion the man’s friendship may assuage it....” “Mrs. Lovegrove is a very charming woman. But Margaret Capel was not in the least like her.” “Or any other woman?” “No.” “You have put yourself out of court. No woman is unlike any other. Your ‘pale fair Margaret’ admits, from the first, that Gabriel Stanton attracts her. And this at a moment when she should allow herself to be attracted by no man. When she has just gone through the horrors of the Divorce Court.” “You are not bringing that up against her?” “I am not bringing anything up against her. But you asked me about the letters. I have only read a dozen of them, and that is how they strike me. A little dull and, on her part, flirtatious.” “I hope you won’t do the book at all if you don’t feel sympathetic.” “Believe me I shall be sympathetic if there is anything with which to sympathise. Do you know her early life, or history? It is hinted at, partly revealed here, but I should like to see it clearly.” “Won’t she tell you herself?” He smiled. I answered his smile. “She has left off coming since I have begun to get well. I shall have to write the book, if I write it at all, without further help. By the way, talking about getting better, I know that doctoring bores you, but I want to know how much better I am going to get? I am as weak as a rat; my legs refuse to carry me, my hand shakes when I get a pen in it. I shall get the story into my head from these papers,” I added, with something of the depression that I was feeling: “But I don’t see how I am to get it out again. I don’t see how I shall ever have the strength to put it on paper.” “That will come. There is no hurry about that. As a matter of fact I believe letters are copyright for fourteen years. It isn’t twelve yet.” It was not worth while to put him right on the copyright acts.