But Margery, too, was thinking of Gelert. She was reading the manuscript of “The Death in the Wood.” She had watched Stephen go out in a slow gloom to the meeting, and then she had hurried to the table and taken guiltily the bundle from the special manuscript drawer. For Stephen, with the sentimental fondness of many writers for the original work of their own hands, preserved his manuscripts long after they had been copied in type and printed and published. Twice during the last week she had gone to that drawer, but each time she had been interrupted. And at each reading her curiosity and admiration had grown.

She had suspected nothing⁠—had imagined no sort of relation between Stephen’s life and Gelert’s adventures. There was no reason why she should. For she detested⁠—as she had been taught by Stephen to detest⁠—the conception of art as a vast autobiography. Stephen’s personality was in the feeling and in the phrasing of his work; and that was enough for her; the substance was a small matter.