"He would, though, if he published it." She thought that she had crushed him; but he merely gained fresh hope, seeing her dally thus with the idea.
"Never," he replied dramatically. "Nobody will ever know except yourself and me."
Before that masterly touch, "will," she crumpled up, and fell back on a new line of defence. "I can't believe," she said, more peaceable, "he's serious. I know quite well, and so do you, it's nothing: just to make the time go while I was alone. I took no trouble: wrote it any odd old time."
"You surely don't imagine," he said, "writers really have to wait for times and seasons and the proper mood? They could work ten to six like anybody else, except it wouldn't be artistic. Do you imagine nothing's good unless it's written with a lobelia in front of you and all that sort of thing? Some of the world's best stuff has come out of an attic. The whole thing's nothing but a pose."
She had her answer about Hubert, without asking. Geoffrey Alison, two years discreet, had suddenly begun to throw bricks in this happy home, and never even heard the crash.
"Oh," she said, lingering on the syllable till it grew into three.
He did not understand. He saw her hesitate and he threw all his weight to drive her the way he desired. "After all," he said, using that most persuasive of openings to a temptation or a fallacy, "what right have you, artistically, to keep to yourself a thing that may please and help millions? You especially, who don't even approve of private Art Galleries because you can't see them! ... I know what it is, exactly; you're thinking of your husband, naturally; but he need never know. I'll do the business, all of it, and show you any notices and no one else will ever guess at all. Think what fun it would be!" (He saw her eyes light up and knew that he had won.) "Besides there'll be the money too and any one can do with that."
"Yes," said Helena, clinging to an earlier sentence, as women will, "but the manuscript gives it away hopelessly that I'm an author's wife, on almost every page."
"Well, how many authors do you think there are?" he said; then with the Tempter's fluency, "and they notoriously marry more than any one. Who in the world could guess? Every one would think that it was by a man. They always do if anybody writes a very intimate peep at a woman's soul." He smiled, remembering how intimate the peep in question sometimes was. "Fancy reading all their silly guesses! Come on! You can't be so selfish!"
Her eyes glistened and she moved on to an earlier point. "It wouldn't really bring much money, would it?" she asked. "Books don't seem to, ever."