Chapter 32

THE CROWNING VICTORY.

That night about seven Ethel came into their room with a waste-paper
basket she had bought for him, and found him sitting at the little
toilet table at which he was to "write." The outlook was, for a London
outlook, spacious, down a long slope of roofs towards the Junction, a
huge sky of blue passing upward to the darkling zenith and downward
into a hazy bristling mystery of roofs and chimneys, from which
emerged signal lights and steam puffs, gliding chains of lit window
carriages and the vague vistas of streets. She showed him the basket
and put it beside him, and then her eye caught the yellow document in
his hand. "What is that you have there?"

He held it out to her. "I found it--lining my yellow box. I had it at
Whortley."

She took it and perceived a chronological scheme. It was headed
"SCHEMA," there were memoranda in the margin, and all the dates had
been altered by a hasty hand.

"Hasn't it got yellow?" she said.

That seemed to him the wrong thing for her to say. He stared at the
document with a sudden accession of sympathy. There was an
interval. He became aware of her hand upon his shoulder, that she was
bending over him. "Dear," she whispered, with a strange change in the
quality of her voice. He knew she was seeking to say something that
was difficult to say.

"Yes?" he said presently.

"You are not grieving?"

"What about?"

"_This_."

"No!"

"You are not--you are not even sorry?" she said.

"No--not even sorry."

"I can't understand that. It's so much--"

"I'm glad," he proclaimed. "_Glad."_

"But--the trouble--the expense--everything--and your work?"

"Yes," he said, "that's just it."

She looked at him doubtfully. He glanced up at her, and she questioned
his eyes. He put his arm about her, and presently and almost
absent-mindedly she obeyed his pressure and bent down and kissed him.

"It settles things," he said, holding her. "It joins us. Don't you
see? Before ... But now it's different. It's something we have between
us. It's something that ... It's the link we needed. It will hold us
together, cement us together. It will be our life. This will be my
work now. The other ..."

He faced a truth. "It was just ... vanity!"

There was still a shade of doubt in her face, a wistfulness.

Presently she spoke.

"Dear," she said.

"Yes?"

She knitted her brows. "No!" she said. "I can't say