“You ought to knock those nails in, Paul,” she said.

He strode to her side.

“What?  What is it?  What’s the matter?” he asked.  “I did knock them in—­or, rather, pulled them out.”

“You left enough to scratch with,” she replied, showing her hand.  From the upper wrist to the knuckle of the little finger a welling red wound showed.

“Good—­Gracious!” Oleron ejaculated....  “Here, come to the bathroom and bathe it quickly—­”

He hurried her to the bathroom, turned on warm water, and bathed and cleansed the bad gash.  Then, still holding the hand, he turned cold water on it, uttering broken phrases of astonishment and concern.

“Good Lord, how did that happen!  As far as I knew I’d ... is this water too cold?  Does that hurt?  I can’t imagine how on earth ... there; that’ll do—­”

“No—­one moment longer—­I can bear it,” she murmured, her eyes closed....

Presently he led her back to the sitting-room and bound the hand in one of his handkerchiefs; but his face did not lose its expression of perplexity.  He had spent half a day in opening and making serviceable the three window-boxes, and he could not conceive how he had come to leave an inch and a half of rusty nail standing in the wood.  He himself had opened the lids of each of them a dozen times and had not noticed any nail; but there it was....

“It shall come out now, at all events,” he muttered, as he went for a pair of pincers.  And he made no mistake about it that time.

Elsie Bengough had sunk into a chair, and her face was rather white; but in her hand was the manuscript of Romilly.  She had not finished with Romilly yet.  Presently she returned to the charge.

“Oh, Paul, it will be the greatest mistake you ever, ever made if you do not publish this!” she said.

He hung his head, genuinely distressed.  He couldn’t get that incident of the nail out of his head, and Romilly occupied a second place in his thoughts for the moment.  But still she insisted; and when presently he spoke it was almost as if he asked her pardon for something.

“What can I say, Elsie?  I can only hope that when you see the new version, you’ll see how right I am.  And if in spite of all you don’t like her, well ...” he made a hopeless gesture.  “Don’t you see that I must be guided by my own lights?”

She was silent.

“Come, Elsie,” he said gently.  “We’ve got along well so far; don’t let us split on this.”

The last words had hardly passed his lips before he regretted them.  She had been nursing her injured hand, with her eyes once more closed; but her lips and lids quivered simultaneously.  Her voice shook as she spoke.

“I can’t help saying it, Paul, but you are so greatly changed.”

“Hush, Elsie,” he murmured soothingly; “you’ve had a shock; rest for a while.  How could I change?”