Jaffery scratched his whiskers and beard and screwed up his face as he did in moments of perplexity.
"What exactly do you want changed?" he asked.
"Just those few coarse touches you admit are yours."
"Adrian wanted to get an atmosphere of rye-whisky and bad tobacco—not tea and strawberries." The eminent novelist's encomium had aroused the artist's pride in his first-born. An altered word would spoil the book. "My dear girl," said he, stretching out his great hand, from beneath which she wriggled an impatient shoulder, "my dear Doria," said he, very gently, "the possessor of the Order of Merit is both a critic and a man of common sense. Anyway, he knows more about novels than either of us do. If it weren't for him I would give you the proofs to blue pencil as much as you liked. But I'm sure you would make a thundering mess of it."
Doria made a little gesture—a bit of a shrug—a bit of a resigned flicker of her hands.
"Of course, do as you please, dear Jaffery. I'm quite alone, a woman with nobody to turn to"—she smiled with her lips, but there was no coordination of her eyes—"as I said before, I pass the proofs."
She went quickly through the drawing-room door into the house, leaving Jaffery still scratching a red whisker.
"Oh, Lord!" said he, ruefully, "I've gone and done it now!"
He turned to follow her, but Barbara interposed her small body on the threshold.
"Don't be a silly fool, Jaff. You've pandered quite enough to her morbid vanity. It's your book, isn't it? You have given it birth. You know better than anybody what is vital to it. Just you send those proofs straight back to the publisher. If you let her persuade you to change one word, as true as I'm standing here, I'll tell her the whole thing, and damn the consequences!"