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, with surprise. “He’s a better judge than I am. What did he say?”

“My dear Katharine,” Rodney exclaimed, “I don’t ask you for criticism, as I should ask a scholar. I dare say there are only five men in England whose opinion of my work matters a straw to me. But I trust you where feeling is concerned. I had you in my mind often when I was writing those scenes. I kept asking myself, ‘Now is this the sort of thing Katharine would like?’ I always think of you when I’m writing, Katharine, even when it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t know about. And I’d rather—yes, I really believe I’d rather—you thought well of my writing than any one in the world.”

This was so genuine a tribute to his trust in her that Katharine was touched.

“You think too much of me altogether, William,” she said, forgetting that she had not meant to speak in this way.

“No, Katharine, I don’t,” he replied, replacing his manuscript in the drawer. “It does me good to think of you.”

So quiet an answer, followed as it was by no expression of love, but merely by the statement that if she must go he would take her to the Strand, and would, if she could wait a moment, change his dressing-gown for a coat, moved her to the warmest feeling of affection for him that she had yet experienced. While he changed in the next room, she stood by the bookcase, taking down books and opening them, but reading nothing on their pages.

She felt certain that she would marry Rodney. How could one avoid it? How could one find fault with it? Here she sighed, and, putting the thought of marriage away, fell into a dream state, in which she became another person, and the whole world seemed