Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one
of his handkerchiefs; but his face did not lose its expression of
perplexity. He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the
three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an
inch and a half of rusty nail standing in the wood. He himself had opened
the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail; but
there it was....

"It shall come out now, at all events," he muttered, as he went for a
pair of pincers. And he made no mistake about it that time. Elsie Bengough had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white; but
in her hand was the manuscript of _Romilly_. She had not finished with
_Romilly_ yet. Presently she returned to the charge. "Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, _ever_ made if you
do not publish this!" she said. He hung his head, genuinely distressed. He couldn't get that incident of
the nail out of his head, and _Romilly_ occupied a second place in his
thoughts for the moment. But still she insisted; and when presently he
spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something. "What can I say, Elsie? I can only hope that when you see the new
version, you'll see how right I am. And if in spite of all you _don't_
like her, well ..." he made a hopeless gesture. "Don't you see that I
_must_ be guided by my own lights?" She was silent. "Come, Elsie," he said gently. "We've got along well so far; don't let us
split on this." The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them. She
had been nursing her injured hand, with her eyes once more closed; but
her lips and lids quivered simultaneously. Her voice shook as she spoke. "I can't help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed." "Hush, Elsie," he murmured soothingly; "you've had a shock; rest for a
while. How could I change?" "I don't know, but you are. You've not been yourself ever since you came
here. I wish you'd never seen the place. It's stopped your work, it's
making you into a person I hardly know, and it's made me horribly anxious
about you.... Oh, how my hand is beginning to throb!" "Poor child!" he murmured. "Will you let me take you to a doctor and have
it properly dressed?" "No--I shall be all right presently--I'll keep it raised----"

She put her elbow on the back of her chair, and the bandaged hand rested
lightly on his shoulder. At that touch an entirely new anxiety stirred suddenly within him. Hundreds of times previously, on their jaunts and excursions, she had
slipped her hand within his arm as she might have slipped it into the arm
of a brother, and he had accepted the little affectionate gesture as a
brother might have accepted it. But now, for the first time, there rushed
into his mind a hundred startling questions. Her eyes were still closed,
and her head had fallen pathetically back; and there was a lost and
ineffable smile on her parted lips. The truth broke in upon him. Good
God!... And he had never divined it! And stranger than all was that, now that he did see that she was lost in
love of him, there came to him, not sorrow and humility and abasement,
but something else that he struggled in vain against--something entirely
strange and new, that, had he analysed it, he would have found to be
petulance and irritation and resentment and ungentleness. The sudden
selfish prompting mastered him before he was aware. He all but gave it
words. What was she doing there at all? Why was she not getting on with
her own work? Why was she here interfering with his? Who had given her
this guardianship over him that lately she had put forward so
assertively?--"Changed?" It was she, not himself, who had changed.... But by the time she had opened her eyes again he had overcome his
resentment sufficiently to speak gently, albeit with reserve. "I wish you would let me take you to a doctor." She rose. "No, thank you, Paul," she said. "I'll go now. If I need a dressing I'll
get one; take the other hand, please. Good-bye--"

He did not attempt to detain her. He walked with her to the foot of the
stairs. Half-way along the narrow alley she turned. "It would be a long way to come if you happened not to be in," she said;
"I'll send you a postcard the next time." At the gate she turned again. "Leave here, Paul," she said, with a mournful look. "Everything's wrong
with this house." Then she was gone. Oleron returned to his room. He crossed straight to the window-box. He
opened the lid and stood long looking at it. Then he closed it again and
turned away. "That's rather frightening," he muttered. "It's simply not possible that
I should not have removed that nail...."


VI

Oleron knew very well what Elsie had meant when she had said that her
next visit would be preceded by a postcard. She, too, had realised that
at last, at last he knew--knew, and didn't want her. It gave him a
miserable, pitiful pang, therefore, when she came again within a week,
knocking at the door unannounced. She spoke from the landing; she did not
intend to stay, she said; and he had to press her before she would so
much as enter. Her excuse for calling was that she had heard of an inquiry for short
stories that he might be wise to follow up. He thanked her. Then, her
business over, she seemed anxious to get away again. Oleron did not seek
to detain her; even he saw through the pretext of the stories; and he
accompanied her down the stairs. But Elsie Bengough had no luck whatever in that house. A second accident
befell her. Half-way down the staircase there was the sharp sound of
splintering wood, and she checked a loud cry. Oleron knew the woodwork to
be old, but he himself had ascended and descended frequently enough
without mishap....

Elsie had put her foot through one of the stairs. He sprang to her side in alarm. "Oh, I say! My poor girl!" She laughed hysterically. "It's my weight--I know I'm getting fat--"

"Keep still--let me clear these splinters away," he muttered between his
teeth. She continued to laugh and sob that it was her weight--she was getting
fat--

He thrust downwards at the broken boards. The extrication was no easy
matter, and her torn boot showed him how badly the foot and ankle
within it must be abraded. "Good God--good God!" he muttered over and over again. "I shall be too heavy for anything soon," she sobbed and laughed. But she refused to reascend and to examine her hurt. "No, let me go quickly--let me go quickly," she repeated. "But it's a frightful gash!" "No--not so bad--let me get away quickly--I'm--I'm not wanted." At her words, that she was not wanted, his head dropped as if she had
given him a buffet. "Elsie!" he choked, brokenly and shocked. But she too made a quick gesture, as if she put something violently
aside. "Oh, Paul, not _that_--not _you_--of course I do mean that too in a
sense--oh, you know what I mean!... But if the other can't be, spare
me this now! I--I wouldn't have come, but--but--oh, I did, I _did_ try to
keep away!"