"You'll never work here."
"Oh?" said Oleron quickly. "Why not?"
"You'll never finish Romilly here. Why, I don't know, but you won't.
I know it. You'll have to leave before you get on with that book."
He mused for a moment, and then said:
"Isn't that a little—prejudiced, Elsie?"
"Perfectly ridiculous. As an argument it hasn't a leg to stand on. But there it is," she replied, her mouth once more full of the large-headed hat pins.
Oleron was reaching down his hat and coat. He laughed.
"I can only hope you're entirely wrong," he said, "for I shall be in a serious mess if Romilly isn't out in the autumn."
IV
As Oleron sat by his fire that evening, pondering Miss Bengough's prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he came to the conclusion that it would have been far better had she kept her beliefs to herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence damped at the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a sense to make them. Speech itself becomes a deterrent act, to which other discouragements accrete until the very event of which warning is given is as likely as not to come to pass. He heartily confounded her. An influence hostile to the completion of Romilly had been born.