“But you mustn’t write too much,” I said. “You must have fixed hours, and at a certain time, say at ten o’clock, I shall insist on your ceasing to write for the night.”
“That seems a wise arrangement. But sometimes I shall be too entranced in the work, I fancy, to leave it without an effort.”
“Ah,” I said, “I shall come behind you, and snatch the pen from your hand!”
“Every Saturday night,” he said, “I shall read to you what I have written during the week.”
No wonder I loved him.
We were married on a September day, and the honeymoon passed delightfully in talk about the book. Nothing proved to me the depth of George’s affection so much as his not beginning the great work before the honeymoon was over. So I often told him, and he smiled fondly in reply. The more, indeed, I praised him the better pleased he seemed to be. The name for this is sympathy.
Conceive us at home in our dear little house in Clapham.
“Will you begin the book at once?” I asked George the day after we arrived.
“I have been thinking that over,” he said. “I needn’t tell you that there is nothing I should like so much, but, on the whole, it might be better to wait a week.”
“Don’t make the sacrifice for my sake,” I said, anxiously.