“Won’t you let me hear what you have written?”
He blushed again.
“Wait till Saturday,” he said.
“Then let me put your papers away,” I said, for I was anxious to see whether he had written anything at all.
“I couldn’t think of it,” he replied, covering the paper with his elbows.
Next morning I counted the clean sheets of paper. They were just as I had put them on the table. So it went on for a fortnight or more, with this difference. He either suspected that I counted the sheets, or thought that I might take it into my head to do so. To allay my suspicions, therefore, he put away what he called his manuscript in a drawer, which he took care to lock. I discovered that one of my own keys opened this drawer, and one day I examined the manuscripts. They consisted of twenty-four pages of paper, without a word written on them. Every evening he added two more clean pages to the contents of the drawer. This discovery made me so scornful that I taxed him with the deceit. At first he tried to brazen it out, but I was merciless, and then he said:
“The fact is that I can’t write by gas-light. I fear I shall have to defer beginning the work until spring.”
“But you used to say that the winter was the best season for writing.”
“I thought so at the time, but I find I was wrong. It will be a great blow to me to give up the work for the present, but there is no help for it.”
When spring came I reminded him that now was his opportunity to begin the book.