Whether it was that practice revived a forgotten skill on my part, or
that Miss Bellingham had over-estimated the amount of work to be done, I
am unable to say. But whichever may have been the explanation, the fact
is that the fourth afternoon saw our task so nearly completed that I was
fain to plead that a small remainder might be left over to form an
excuse for yet one more visit to the reading-room.

Short, however, as had been the period of our collaboration, it had been
long enough to produce a great change in our relations to one another.
For there is no friendship so intimate and satisfying as that engendered
by community of work, and none--between man and woman, at any rate--so
frank and wholesome.

Every day I had arrived to find a pile of books with the places duly
marked and the blue covered quarto note-books in readiness. Every day we
had worked steadily at the allotted task, had then handed in the books
and gone forth together to enjoy a most companionable tea in the
milk-shop; thereafter to walk home by way of Queen Square, talking over
the day's work and discussing the state of the world in the far-off days
when Ahkhenaten was king and the Tell el Amarna tablets were a-writing.

It had been a pleasant time, so pleasant, that as I handed in the books
for the last time, I sighed to think that it was over; that not only
was the task finished, but that the recovery of my fair patient's hand,
from which I had that morning removed the splint, had put an end to the
need of my help.

"What shall we do?" I asked, as we came out into the central hall; "it
is too early for tea. Shall we go and look at some of the galleries?"