She was watching.  How intent was that vigil, how alert and sharpened her senses, a woman who has watched alone may answer.  Now, she felt, was the crisis at hand:  the moment when her future, and his was to hang in the balance.  The work on the farms, which had hitherto left Chiltern but little time for thought, had relaxed.  In these wet days had he begun to brood a little?  Did he show signs of a reversion to that other personality, the Chiltern she had not known, yet glimpses of whom she had had?  She recalled the third time she had seen him, the morning at the Lilacs in Newport, that had left upon her the curious sense of having looked on a superimposed portrait.  That Chiltern which she called her Viking, and which, with a woman’s perversity, she had perhaps loved most of all, was but one expression of the other man of days gone by.  The life of that man was a closed book she had never wished to open.  Was he dead, or sleeping?  And if sleeping, would he awake?  How softly she tread!

And in these days, with what exquisite, yet tremulous skill and courage did she bring up the subject of that other labour they were to undertake together—­the life and letters of his father.  In the early dusk, when they had returned from their long rides, she contrived to draw Chiltern into his study.  The cheerfulness, the hopefulness, the delight with which she approached the task, the increasing enthusiasm she displayed for the character of the General as she read and sorted the letters and documents, and the traits of his she lovingly traced in Hugh, were not without their effect.  It was thus she fanned, ceaselessly and with a smile, and with an art the rarest women possess, the drooping flame.  And the flame responded.

How feverishly she worked, unknown to him, he never guessed; so carefully and unobtrusively planted her suggestions that they were born again in glory as his inspiration.  The mist had lifted a little, and she beheld the next stage beyond.  To reach that stage was to keep him intent on this work—­and—­after that, to publish!  Ah, if he would only have patience, or if she could keep him distracted through this winter and their night, she might save him.  Love such as hers can even summon genius to its aid, and she took fire herself at the thought of a book worthy of that love, of a book—­though signed by him that would redeem them, and bring a scoffing world to its knees in praise.  She spent hours in the big library preparing for Chiltern’s coming, with volumes in her lap and a note-book by her side.

One night, as they sat by the blazing logs in his study, which had been the General’s, Chiltern arose impulsively, opened the big safe in the corner, and took out a leather-bound book and laid it on her lap.  Honora stared at it:  it was marked:  Highlawns, Visitors’ Book.”

“It’s curious I never thought of it before,” he said, “but my father, had a habit of jotting down notes in it on important occasions.  It may be of some use to us Honora.”