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had no major vices and, though he would have shrunk from admitting it, he preferred women in print to women in the flesh. He took his work very seriously. Every time—that is, about every two years—a book »of his appeared he would go around the shops and libraries and make sure it was being properly displayed. If he found it hidden away on some obscure shelf he would take it down and leave it carelessly in some conspicuous place. In libraries he would pick up a copy—there never seemed a great run on any of his works— and hang about until he got into conversation with some fellow-borrower, when he would say speculatively he’d heard very good opinions of this fellow’s work.
    In the press of his work he didn’t forget his aunts. He paid them visits every two months or so, and he wrote to them for their birthdays, and usually went down to Brakemouth for Christmas. During the June before Colonel Sherren’s death he spent two or three days at Seaview House, and at that time he was struck by a great change in the younger sister. She had always been timid, hesitant, given to hurried whispering in corners, little pushes, bland assumptions of indifference that deceived no one. In short, she had no confidence at all, and breathlessly agreed to anything her more dominant sister proposed. But this particular summer she seemed suddenly to have discovered a personality of her own. She even sat out on the balcony, a thing she had never done before. And it wasn’t alwayt convenient, she suggested, to fall in with Clara’s plans.
    “I am sorry,” she would say calmly. “I don’t think I can accompany you to the Denvers tomorrow.”
    “What can you be doing?” Clara would demand, and Isabel, with a little toss of the head that was certainly new, would smile and say she simply didn’t particularly care about visiting the Denvers. Mrs. Denver was a very monotonous conversationalist— didn’t Clara really think so?
    “It is most inconsiderate of you,” Clara scolded. “They will think it very strange your absenting yourself, after I accepted for both of us.”
    But Isabel said, “No,” she hardly thought Mrs. Denver would notice whether she came or not. Pressed inexorably by Clara as to how she intended to spend the afternoon, she said tranquilly she thought of going to the cinema.
    “Really, Isabel, you cannot expect me to offer the Denvers such a frivolous excuse. You can go to the cinema any day.”
    “I really am not concerned with what the Denvers think, Clara. And as to going to the cinema some other day, the programs are changed on Thursday and I should miss seeing this particular picture.”
    “One would almost think,” said Clara, icily, “that you had a rendezvous.” She glanced at John with a small, pinched smile. But John didn’t smile back. He was really just like scores of other authors. He wrote because he enjoyed writing, he made very little money, very few people had heard of him, and he spent most of his time either thinking about the book he was writing now or the book he was going to start whenever he could get an idea. He got the faint scent of one now. Aunt Isabel and a rendezvous! Well, why not? He remembered his publisher saying to him once: “Woman’s second blooming is always a hot penny.”
    And really Isabel was looking almost coquettish. She was more fortunate than Clara, he decided. These willowy statuesque girls became angular, frigid old ladies, while the soft plump ones simply got softer and plumper. Not, of course, that one would approve of Aunt Isabel going to extremes. The Colonel, he had been given to understand, had left quite a packet, presumably dividing the bulk of it between his two daughters. Isabel had once whispered to him, “Of course, dear, everything I have will come to you eventually,” by which he imagined she meant that Clara would have the use of the income if she survived her sister, and that when she, too, died, Isabel’s portion at least would come to