satire, fancy. I shall write the introductory letter after
breakfast."

Frank was in shoaling water, and could not pay his contributors; but
Mike could get blood out of a turnip, and Frank advanced him ten
pounds on the proposed articles. Frank counted on these articles to
whip up the circulation, and Mike promised to let him have four
within the week, and left the cottage at Henley, where Frank was
living, full of dreams of work. And every morning before he got out
of bed he considered and reconsidered his subject, finding always
more than one idea, and many a witty fancy; and every day after
breakfast the work undone hung like a sword between Hall and him as
they sat talking of their friends, of art, of women, of things that
did not interest them. They hung around each other, loth yet desirous
to part; they followed each other through the three rooms, buttoning
their braces and shirt-collars. And when conversation had worn itself
out, Mike accepted any pretext to postpone the day's work. He had to
fetch ink or cigarettes.

But he was always detained, if not by friends, by the beauty of the
gardens or the river. Never did the old dining-hall and the
staircases, balustraded--on whose gray stone a leaf, the first of
many, rustles--seem more intense and pregnant with that mystic
mournfulness which is the Thames, and which is London. The dull
sphinx-like water rolling through multitude of bricks, seemed to mark
on this wistful autumn day a more melancholy enchantment, and looking
out on the great waste of brick delicately blended with smoke and
mist, and seeing the hay-boats sailing picturesquely, and the tugs
making for Blackfriars, long lines of coal-barges in their wake,
laden so deep that the water slopped over the gunwales, he thought of
the spring morning when he had waited there for Lily. How she
persisted in his mind! Why had he not asked her to marry him instead
of striving to make her his mistress? She was too sweet to be cast
off like the others; she would have accepted him if he had asked her.
He had sacrificed marriage for self, and what had self given him?

Mike was surprised at these thoughts, and pleased, for they proved a
certain residue of goodness in him; at all events, called into his
consideration a side of his nature which he was not wearisomely
familiar with. Then he dismissed these thoughts as he might have the
letter of a determined creditor. He could still bid them go. And
having easily rid hi