Chapter 6

When, half an hour later, he approached Jersey Villas, he noticed
that the house-door was open; then, as he reached the gate, saw it
make a frame for an unexpected presence. Mrs. Ryves, in her bonnet
and jacket, looked out from it as if she were expecting something--as
if she had been passing to and fro to watch. Yet when he had
expressed to her that it was a delightful welcome she replied that
she had only thought there might possibly be a cab in sight. He
offered to go and look for one, upon which it appeared that after all
she was not, as yet at least, in need. He went back with her into
her sitting-room, where she let him know that within a couple of days
she had seen clearer what was best; she had determined to quit Jersey
Villas and had come up to take away her things, which she had just
been packing and getting together.

"I wrote you last night a charming letter in answer to yours," Baron
said. "You didn't mention in yours that you were coming up."

"It wasn't your answer that brought me. It hadn't arrived when I
came away."

"You'll see when you get back that my letter is charming."

"I daresay." Baron had observed that the room was not, as she had
intimated, in confusion--Mrs. Ryves's preparations for departure were
not striking. She saw him look round and, standing in front of the
fireless grate with her hands behind her, she suddenly asked: "Where
have you come from now?"

"From an interview with a literary friend."

"What are you concocting between you?"

"Nothing at all. We've fallen out--we don't agree."

"Is he a publisher?"

"He's an editor."

"Well, I'm glad you don't agree. I don't know what he wants, but,
whatever it is, don't do it."

"He must do what _I_ want!" said Baron.

"And what's that?"

"Oh, I'll tell you when he has done it!" Baron begged her to let him
hear the "musical idea" she had mentioned in her letter; on which she
took off her hat and jacket and, seating herself at her piano, gave
him, with a sentiment of which the very first notes thrilled him, the
accompaniment of his song. She phrased the words with her sketchy
sweetness, and he sat there as if he had been held in a velvet vise,
throbbing with the emotion, irrecoverable ever after in its
freshness, of the young artist in the presence for the first time of
"production"--the proofs of his book, the hanging of his picture, the
rehearsal of his play. When she had finished he asked again for the
same delight, and then for more music and for more; it did him such a
world of good, kept him