Armstrong hesitated. She was hardly strong enough to talk the matter over to-night, anyway. It would be a kindness to leave it until to-morrow.
“Thank God it is not too late!” Uncle Peabody heard him repeat to himself, and the old man wondered if, after all, the sun was going to shine through the cypress-trees.
XXII
Helen did not come down to breakfast the next morning, so Armstrong and Miss Thayer found themselves at the library at their usual hour in spite of the festivities of the night before. The events of the evening impressed upon Jack the necessity of bringing his work to a speedy conclusion. With feverish haste, and forgetful of his companion, he seized his pen and transferred to the blank paper before him the words which came faster than they could be transcribed. Left to her own resources, Inez picked up the bunch of manuscript and settled back in her chair to run it over, glancing from time to time at Armstrong, who seemed consumed by the task before him. Accustomed as she was to his moods while at work, Inez was almost frightened by the present intensity. She hesitated even to move about lest he be disturbed, yet until he gave her something to do she was wholly unemployed.
For over an hour Armstrong’s pen ran on. The fever was upon him, the message was in his mind, the spirit must be translated to the more tangible medium of words. At length, utterly exhausted for the moment, he threw aside his pen and leaned back in his chair.
“It is finished!” he cried, looking for the first time into Inez’ face; “all is now actually written, and the revision alone remains.”
Inez started to speak a word of congratulation, but in a flood of realization she knew that the companionship of the past three months was at an end. For the revision Armstrong would need no assistance; so she faltered for a moment, but the omission was unnoticed.
“I have just written the summary in the last chapter,” Armstrong continued. “I have taken Michelangelo’s allegorical statues in the Laurentian Chapel as typifying the characteristics and the tendencies of the period. All that I have written seems naturally to lead up to them. Listen.”