Page:E Nesbit - Man and Maid (1906).djvu/106

 life—even with the sea. Great, smooth, dark waves seemed rushing upon her in the quiet room; she could hear the sound of them on the beach. Why had she come near the sea? It was the same sea that She pushed the waves away with both hands. The church clock struck two.

“You mustn’t go mad, you know,” she told herself very gently and reasonably, “because of the boys.”

Her hands had got clenched somehow, her whole body was rigid. She relaxed the tense muscles deliberately, made up the fire, swept up the hearth.

The new flame her touch inspired flickered a red reflection on the face of the cabinet—the cabinet with the secret drawer that had “inspired Edgar with mysterious tales.”

Jane went to it, and patted it, and stroked it, and coaxed it to tell her its secret. But it would not.

“If it would only inspire me,” she said, “if I could only get an idea for the story, I could do it now—this minute. Lots of people work best at night. My brain’s really quite clear again now, or else I shouldn’t be able to remember all these silly little things. No, no,” she cried to a memory of a young man