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He came into the room as Anne Dallas began another page of her copy.

She rose to greet him, but did not move toward him. She had learned that he liked to go about without anything to remind him of his misfortune. He knew every inch of this room perfectly, literally by heart, for he had himself designed it before he had been stricken. He often went straight to the right shelf and laid his hand upon the book that he wanted.

“Good morning, Miss Dallas,” he said. “‛Richard and Robin were two lazy men!’ I’ll warrant that’s what you were thinking, and that Richard had not cured himself of ‛lying in bed till the clock struck ten.’”

“More likely you were tramping before the clock struck five!” cried Anne.

“That’s nearer the mark than your rash judgment and condemnation of me by a text from Mother Goose!” said Richard Latham, throwing himself appreciatively into his comfortable chair. “I was out at six and I’m nicely tired, just enough tired to want to cut work. Besides, you extracted from me yesterday everything I have to say on every known subject! I shall have to wait to fill up from whatever the sources are that supply ideas. You’re a frightful person for getting a poor fellow going and keeping him at it till you’ve got all his brains down in funny little cabalistic signs. Then the next day you write out pages and swear the utterances that fill me with awe were hidden under those inky wriggles! I don’t believe it! You insist the inky-wriggles wisdom is mine. Stuff and nonsense! Why, I don’t know a fraction of what you say I dictate to you! It’s uncanny. The only thing that I don’t understand, and which gives a tint of colour to your statement, is that I’ve no brains left after one of those frightful days when you wind me up—like yesterday! It’s all curious. Still more so that by to-morrow you’ll wind me up again, and so on, da capo. But not to-day, Miss Thaumaturga! Not a bit of work shall you get out of me to-day, not the least preposition for you to set down in a dash or a dot!”