ulated Martin Beverley vaguely. "Well!" He pushed back his
chair and strolled over to the window, drawing a cigarette case from his
pocket as he went. Every morning of his life he took up this position
after breakfast, smoked a regulation cigarette, presumably digested the
morning's news, and thought out his plans for the day. Katrine was
accustomed to the sight, but this morning something in the pose of the
figure attracted an uneasy attention. The shoulders drooped, the whole
attitude bespoke weariness, a lack of purpose.

Martin Beverley stood in the alcove of the window, and the light shining
through the upper panes left his figure in the shade, and fell full upon
the pictured face above the mantel--the fair young face with the
unending smile. The scene might have been taken as the motif for an
artist's picture, portraying the desolation of a widowed home.
Katrine's quick sensibilities grasped its significance, and her heart
contracted with sympathy. "Juliet! Juliet!" she sighed to herself.
"The old ache; the old pain!" but in truth Juliet might never have
existed, for all the part she played in her husband's thoughts at that
moment. Martin Beverley was passing through that trying stage in the
life of an author when he casts about in his mind for the plan of a
future book, and can find no satisfactory response. Three months ago,
when his last manuscript had been despatched to the publisher, he had
acclaimed his liberty with the zest of a schoolboy released from school,
had found it sheer joy to wake in the morning to the expectation of a
lazy day, but now the holiday mood was fast turning into unrest; the
creative instinct had awakened from its sleep, and its voice would not
be denied.

Imaginary characters flitted before Martin's brain, he lived with them,
carved out their lives. In a flash of enthusiasm he saw the completed
whole, and found it the finest thing he had yet achieved. From time to
time he wrote out notes; sketched out the first few chapters, then
reading them over, fell once more into the trough of despair. A day or
two of restless wanderings, and he would begin again, and again would
follow the check, the discouragement. He had lived through the same
misery with each fresh book which he had written. Experience had proved
that in this instance it was indeed the first step which cost, that once
fairly afloat his characters would grow in reality, and in inexplicable
fashion would take th