"Monday. Everything changed. Old plot exploded in thousand pieces. Mustn't be honeymoon couple. Heroine radiant young girl, eighteen, hair red as Circe's, eyes of new-born angel, comes like bombshell into hero's life. Not good simile, bombshell. Query, hero. Would she fall in love with man of B. N.'s type? I see another type more probable, but don't want that.
"August 4th. Fearful row. General upset. Don't see any book unless I write it alone. Aline says I can save situation for her. Would like only too well do what she wants, but difficult bring it off as things are. Chances in favour of other man. Temptation consent be cat's-paw. Is that fair to the lovely chestnut in the fire? Extra-ordinary that child like this can so upset us all. What is the electric attraction we can't resist? More than normal amount of radium, perhaps!"
"Well, why don't you laugh at the rattle of the dry bones?" asked Basil, as I read on, more and more puzzled.
"I haven't come to many funny things yet," said I, "except about Job. That was rather good, though I don't see how you weave such things into your books."
"Job—Job?" he repeated vaguely. Then a rush of blood went over his whole face, up to his forehead. His dreamy dark eyes looked suddenly anything but dreamy. "Good Heavens!" he gasped. "What have you got there?" and began to ransack all the pockets of his waistcoat and coat until he found the twin of the book he'd given me. "This is what I meant you to see," he said in a queer, ashamed voice.
I handed the first book back to him. He seized it and glanced from page to page, looking almost ill. By and by he came to something which seemed to scare him. As far as I could tell, it was farther toward the end than I had read.
"Would you mind showing me where you left off," he asked.
"It was where you were wondering whether your new heroine had swallowed radium or something," said I.
"Oh!" He looked relieved. "Well—I wouldn't have had you see that idiotic stuff for a good deal. But I told you, didn't I, that if the book went on I'd have to put you into it? There's a lot of silly rot there. Poetical license!"
"The thing that made the most impression on me was the part about the red hair," I said. "The description sounded so nice. Who was Circe, please? Was she Scottish? It's a name a Pictish princess might have had."