I had been relating, on the morning after the Blake affair, the stirring episode of the previous night to Julian. He agreed with me that it was curious that our potato-thrower of Covent Garden market should have crossed my path again. But I noticed that, though he listened intently enough, he lay flat on his back in his hammock, not looking at me, but blinking at the ceiling; and when I had finished he turned his face towards the wall—which was unusual, since I generally lunched on his breakfast, as I was doing then, to the accompaniment of quite a flow of languid abuse.
I was in particularly high spirits that morning, for I fancied that I had found a way out of my difficulty about Margaret. That subject being uppermost in my mind, I guessed at once what Julian’s trouble was.
“I think you’d like to know, Julian,” I said, “whether I’d written to Guernsey.”
“Well?”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“You’ve told her to come?”
“No; but I’m able to take my respite without wounding her. That’s as good as writing, isn’t it? We agreed on that.”
“Yes; that was the idea. If you could find a way of keeping her from knowing how well you were getting on with your writing, you were to take it. What’s your idea?”
“I’ve hit on a very simple way out of the difficulty,” I said. “It came to me only this morning. All I need do is to sign my stuff with a pseudonym.”
“You only thought of that this morning?”