Martin’s face softened eloquently.
“So you have, darling. So you always will have. But that’s thanks to yourself. And why should he grudge you your happiness, pray? Isn’t he happy himself? Isn’t his Teresa happy?”
“Oh, yes. Teresa is as happy as Teresa can be.”
“Well, then!” exclaimed Martin conclusively, and dropped the subject. He had wisely abandoned the effort of following his wife’s nights of thought, and was for the moment more engrossed with his own. He glanced at the clock, and there fell over his face that restless, straining expression which Grizel had learned to recognise as a sign that work in the study was not going well. Being a wife she dared a question which from anyone else would have been an offence.
“Book dragging?”
“Badly.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Come to a full stop. I know where I am, and I know where I want to get, but there’s a middle distance to be filled in... filled, not padded... and ideas won’t come. I need four or five chapters to give the characters time to—er—”
“I know.” Grizel tilted her chin and assumed an expression of ferocious absorption. She would emerge from it presently and make suggestions, and none of the suggestions would be of the slightest use. Martin knew as much, but he lingered all the same because Grizel was Grizel, and whatever she said delighted him to hear.
“Make the heroine go into the park, and sit on a bench, and talk to an old man...”