She began to look troubled.
“I have been misled,” she said; “I had gained quite a wrong impression of him.”
“Very few people know anything at all about him,” I said warmly; “you are not alone in that.”
“I suppose his next novel is finished now?” said Freda; “he told me he had only one or two more chapters to write when I saw him a few months ago on his way from Ben Rhydding. What is he writing now?”
“He is writing that novel over again,” I replied.
“Over again? What fearful waste of time!”
“Yes, it has cost him hundreds of hours’ work; it just shows what a man he is, that he has gone through with it so bravely.”
“But how do you mean? Didn’t it do?”
Rashly, perhaps, yet I think unavoidably, I told her the truth.
“It was the best thing he had ever written, but unfortunately it was destroyed, burnt to a cinder. That was not very pleasant, was it, for a man who never makes two copies of his work?”