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The little man is laying his bricks carefully one on top of the other.

“You spoke sort o’ sharp to your missis today, coz she woz a bit laite, an’ I thort as ‘ow ye woz uncommon lucky to ‘ave ‘er come nice and tidy with it–it’s been twenty years since I woz brought me dinner in a basin.”

There’s a silence. The big man looks thoughtful, then he says suddenly:

“Well I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do it, that’s all I sez. Wy don’t ye put ‘er away someweres?”

“I did, but lor, it woz no matter o’ good. I allus fancied she’d set ‘erself o’ fire or fall in the street or somethink an’ get took to the station on a stretcher with the boys a’ callin’ ‘meat’ arter ‘er, an’ I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ of it, so I fetched ‘er back. We woz very ‘appy for six year, an’ thet’s more nor some folk az in all their lives, an'”–with a quaint embarrassment–“she were the only woman as ever I keered for, right from the fust minute I seed ‘er ‘oldin’ a big bunch o’ poppies an’ that grass they call ‘wag wantons’ down there, in ‘er ‘and, as pretty as a picture–an’ I didn’t marry ‘er cos she could cook, that’s no wearin’ reason to marry a woman for, leastwise not for me. An’ I wouldn’t ‘ave the children–I call ’em children, though, lor bless yer, they’re grown up and doin’ well–I wouldn’t ‘ave ’em think I’d turned their mother out o’ doors–no”–with an emphatic dab of mortar–“no, ‘er fate’s my fate, an’ I ain’t the kind o’ chap to turn the ole woman out for what she can by no manner o’ means ‘elp!” and he puts another brick neatly on the top of the last and scrapes the oozing mortar.

The big man rubs the back of his hand across his eyes, and says with a gulp:

“Shake ‘ands, mate, damme if I know wot to call yer, a bloomin’ archangel or a blasted softy.”

The woman lay as he left her, with her feet thrust out in her half-buttoned boots, and her hands hanging straight down. The sun crept round the room, and at length a clock chimed four strokes up on the drawing-room floor. A woman sitting writing at a table between the window looks up with a sigh of relief, and moistens her lips; they are dry. A pile of closely written manuscript lies on the floor beside her; she drops each sheet as she finishes it.

She is writing for money, writing because she must, because it is the tool given to her wherewith to carve her way; she is nervous, overwrought, every one of her fingers seems as if it had a burning nerve-knot in its tip; she has thrust her slippers aside, for her feet twitch; she is writing feverishly now, for she has been undergoing the agony of a barren period for some weeks, her brain has seemed arid as a sand plain, not a flower of fancy has sprung up in it; she has felt in her despair as if she were hollowed out, honeycombed by her emotions, and she has cried over her mental sterility. Her measure of success has come to her, her public waits, what if she have nothing to give them? The thought has worn her, whispered to her in dreams at night, taken the savour out of her food by day. But this morning a little idea came and grew, grew so blessedly, and she has been working since early day. Her landlady has forgotten her luncheon; she never noticed the omission, but now she feels her frail body give way under the strain; she will finish this chapter and have some tea. She has heard steps below. She writes until the half-hour strikes, then drops the last sheet of paper with a sobbing sigh of relief. She pulls the bell sharply and sits waiting patiently. No one answers it. She rings again; there is a crash downstairs as of china falling with a heavy body, and a smothered groan. She trembles, listens, and then goes down.