” “You forget,” she said, looking up at him with a faint smile, “that under the cloak of her name I am earning more money a week than I could ever have earned in a year by my own labours. She came in while he was still in the throes, conviction battling with commonsense, his own apprehension. He’s the handle of life for you. The girl who had just left the room was as great a mystery to him now as on the afternoon when he had met her in Piccadilly and taken her to tea. 82 She was putting a manuscript away, gingerly locking its heavy tooled cover, but it was a huge, awkward tome.