"Not me, my son. I'm happier here. I want to get a chapter done."
"What's the good of writing novels ... they don't pay, do they?"
"Pay! They pay you for every hour you spend over them," said Kenneth. "I should go brooding mad if I couldn't sit down for an hour or so every night and do what I like with my people. The unhappiest moments of my life were when, to oblige Elizabeth, I gave up novel-writing for a time, and took to poverty statistics."
Humphrey glanced up at the mantelpiece. A portrait of Elizabeth Carr was there, in a silver frame, set haphazard among the litter of masculine knick-knacks—ash-trays, a cigarette-box and a few old pipes. It was a portrait that had always attracted Humphrey; the sun had caught the depth of her eyes and the shadows about her throat. He was never in the room without being conscious of that portrait, and often, when he was not thinking of her at all, he would find himself looking upwards at the silver frame to see, confronting him, the eyes of Elizabeth Carr. She, herself, never seemed to be quite like the photograph. She came, sometimes, to see Kenneth, and, at rare intervals, Humphrey's visits coincided with hers.
She did not live with her brother. She was more fortunate than he, because she had been left an income which was large enough for all her wants. She had always wished to help Kenneth with a small allowance, but he declared he would not touch a penny of her money. "I'll fight my own battles," he said.
There was something in her attitude towards Humphrey—a vague, impalpable something—that left him always uneasy; perhaps it was a subtle display of deference—he could not define it, but he felt that she was comparing him, in her mind, with Kenneth, and that he was worsted in the comparison. She would move about in the little room, preparing tea for them, her presence bringing an oddly domestic air into the rooms, and Humphrey would help her, and she would be jolly and laugh when he was clumsy, but all the time it was as if she were holding him away from her with invisible hands.
And, when he looked at her photograph, he saw behind the clear beauty of the face, with its smile of tenderness and large eyes that never left him, an Elizabeth Carr divinely meek ... utterly unlike the Elizabeth Carr he knew, who carried herself with such graceful pride and seemed so far above him.
He took up the portrait for a moment. "She hasn't been here lately?" he said.
"Who?" asked Kenneth, at his writing-table.
"Your sister ... you were speaking about the statistics you did for her."