The chairs were fetched from a far-off summer house and we settled down.  Jaffery lit his pipe, smiled at Doria, and met a very wistful look.  He held her eyes for a space, and laid his great hand very gently on hers.

“I know what you’re thinking of,” he said, with an arresting tenderness in his deep voice.  “You won’t have to wait much longer.”

“Is it at the printer’s?”

“It’s printed.”

Barbara and I gave each a little start—­we looked at Jaffery, who was taking no notice of us, and then questioningly at each other.  What on earth did the man mean?

“From to-morrow onwards, till publication, the press will be flooded with paragraphs about Adrian Boldero’s new book.  I fixed it up with Wittekind, as a sort of welcome home to you.”

“That was very kind, Jaffery,” said Doria; “but was it necessary?  I mean, couldn’t Wittekind have done it before?”

“It was necessary in a way,” said Jaffery.  “We wanted you to pass the proofs.”

Doria smiled proudly.  “Pass Adrian’s proofs?  I?  I wouldn’t presume to do such a thing.”

“Well, here they are, anyway,” said Jaffery.

And to the bewilderment of Barbara and myself, he snapped open the hasps of his suit-case and drew out a great thick clump of galley-proofs fastened by a clip at the left hand top corner, which he deposited on Doria’s lap.  She closed her eyes and her eyelids fluttered as she fingered the precious thing.  For a moment we thought she was going to faint.  There was breathless silence.  Even Susan, who had been left out in the cold, let the black kitten leap from her knee, and aware that something out of the ordinary was happening, fixed her wondering eyes on Doria.  Her mother and I wondered even more than Susan, for we had more reason.  Of what manuscript, in heaven’s name, were these the printed proofs?  Was it possible that I had been mistaken and that Jaffery, in the assiduity of love, had made coherence out of Adrian’s farrago of despair?

Jaffery touched Doria’s hand with his finger tips.  She opened her eyes and smiled wanly, and looked at the front slip of the long proofs.  At once she sat bolt upright.

“‘The Greater Glory.’  But that wasn’t Adrian’s title.  His title was ‘God.’  Who has dared to change it?”

[Illustration:  He drew out a great thick clump of galley-proofs.]

Her eyes flashed; her little body quivered.  She flamed an incarnate indignation.  For some reason or other she turned accusingly on me.

“I knew nothing of the change,” said I, “but I’m very glad to hear of it now.”

Many times before had I been forced to disclaim knowledge of what Jaffery had been doing with the book.

“Wittekind wouldn’t have the old title,” cried Jaffery eagerly.  “The public are very narrow minded, and he felt that in certain quarters it might be misunderstood.”

“Wittekind told dear Adrian that he thought it a perfect title.”