Oleron was reaching down his hat and coat. He laughed.

"I can only hope you're entirely wrong," he said, "for I shall be in a
serious mess if _Romilly_ isn't out in the autumn."


IV

As Oleron sat by his fire that evening, pondering Miss Bengough's
prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he came to the
conclusion that it would have been far better had she kept her beliefs to
herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence damped at
the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a sense to make them.
Speech itself becomes a deterrent act, to which other discouragements
accrete until the very event of which warning is given is as likely as
not to come to pass. He heartily confounded her. An influence hostile
to the completion of _Romilly_ had been born.

And in some illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had attached
this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever anything so
absurd! "You'll never finish _Romilly_ here." ... Why not? Was this her
idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and brings a man down
to indolence and dropping out of the race? The place was well enough--it
was entirely charming, for that matter--but it was not so demoralising as
all that! No; Elsie had missed the mark that time....

He moved his chair to look round the room that smiled, positively
smiled, in the firelight. He too smiled, as if pity was to be
entertained for a maligned apartment. Even that slight lack of robust
colour he had remarked was not noticeable in the soft glow. The drawn