set her asking herself in despair what on earth she was to do with
them? Her mother refused, also, to face the radical questions of what
to leave in and what to leave out. She could not decide how far the
public was to be told the truth about the poet's separation from his
wife. She drafted passages to suit either case, and then liked each so
well that she could not decide upon the rejection of either.

But the book must be written. It was a duty that they owed the world,
and to Katharine, at least, it meant more than that, for if they could
not between them get this one book accomplished they had no right to
their privileged position. Their increment became yearly more and more
unearned. Besides, it must be established indisputably that her
grandfather was a very great man.

By the time she was twenty-seven, these thoughts had become very
familiar to her. They trod their way through her mind as she sat
opposite her mother of a morning at a table heaped with bundles of old
letters and well supplied with pencils, scissors, bottles of gum,
india-rubber bands, large envelopes, and other appliances for the
manufacture of books. Shortly before Ralph Denham's visit, Katharine
had resolved to try the effect of strict rules upon her mother's
habits of literary composition. They were to be seated at their tables
every morning at ten o'clock, with a clean-swept morning of empty,
secluded hours before them. They were to keep their eyes fast upon the
paper, and nothing was to tempt them to speech, save at the stroke of
the hour when ten minutes for relaxation were to be allowed them. If
these rules were observed for a year, she made out on a sheet of paper
that the completion of the book was certain, and she laid her scheme
before her mother with a feeling that much of the task was already
accomplished. Mrs. Hilbery examined the sheet of paper very carefully.