When he went off he carried the three books under his arm.
“I shall read ‘The Ninefold Flower,’ first. It interests me to see how a writer’s mind develops.”
That night she had no dream and next day she tried even more eagerly than usual to get in touch with V. Lydiat, but in vain. The oracle was dumb. It frightened her, for the whole thing was so strange that she had never felt sure it might not vanish as suddenly as it came. She sat patiently all that morning, hoping and sorely disturbed, but the Pacific hung a relentless azure curtain before her fairyland and the pines dreamed their own sunshine-fragrance and made no way for palms.
At one o’clock the telephone rang sharply,
“Welland speaking. May I come and see you this afternoon?”
It was impossible for she had an engagement, but she named the evening at eight. He caught at it—his voice was evidence of that eagerness.
He came a minute or two before the time, and a book was in his hand. She knew the cover with a drift of stars across it before he spoke.
It broke out the moment he was in the room.
“A most amazing thing. I hardly know how to tell you. You’ll think I’m mad. It’s my book—mine, yet I never wrote it.”
They stared at each other in a kind of consternation and the little colour in her face fell away and left her lily-pale. She could feel but not control the trembling of her hands.