As I walked homewards I speculated cheerfully on the prospect of entertaining my friends under my own (or rather Barnard’s) roof, if they could be lured out of their eremitical retirement.  The idea had, in fact, occurred to me already, but I had been deterred by the peculiarities of Barnard’s housekeeper.  For Mrs. Gummer was one of those housewives who make up for an archaic simplicity of production by preparations on the most portentous and alarming scale.  But this time I would not be deterred.  If only the guests could be enticed into my humble lair, it would be easy to furnish the raw materials of the feast from outside; and the consideration of ways and means occupied me pleasantly until I found myself once more at my writing-table, confronted by my voluminous notes on the incident of the North Syrian War.

CHAPTER VIII

A MUSEUM IDYLL

Whether it was that practice revived a forgotten skill on my part, or that Miss Bellingham had over-estimated the amount of work to be done, I am unable to say.  But whichever may have been the explanation, the fact is that the fourth afternoon saw our task so nearly completed that I was fain to plead that a small remainder might be left over to form an excuse for yet one more visit to the reading-room.

Short, however, as had been the period of our collaboration, it had been long enough to produce a great change in our relations to one another.  For there is no friendship so intimate and satisfying as that engendered by community of work, and none—­between man and woman, at any rate—­so frank and wholesome.

Every day I had arrived to find a pile of books with the places duly marked and the blue covered quarto note-books in readiness.  Every day we had worked steadily at the allotted task, had then handed in the books and gone forth together to enjoy a most companionable tea in the milk-shop; thereafter to walk home by way of Queen Square, talking over the day’s work and discussing the state of the world in the far-off days when Ahkhenaten was king and the Tell el Amarna tablets were a-writing.

It had been a pleasant time, so pleasant, that as I handed in the books for the last time, I sighed to think that it was over; that not only was the task finished, but that the recovery of my fair patient’s hand, from which I had that morning removed the splint, had put an end to the need of my help.

“What shall we do?” I asked, as we came out into the central hall; “it is too early for tea.  Shall we go and look at some of the galleries?”

“Why not?” she answered.  “We might look over some of the things connected with what we have been doing.  For instance, there is a relief of Ahkhenaten upstairs in the Third Egyptian Room; we might go and look at that.”

I fell in eagerly with the suggestion, placing myself under her experienced guidance, and we started by way of the Roman Gallery, past the long row of extremely commonplace and modern-looking Roman Emperors.