good-bye. I trust we are to be
friends, for all that?'

'Indeed, I hope we may be.'

They shook hands, and he went towards the door. But before opening it,
he asked:

'Did you read that thing of mine in The Current?'

'Yes, I did.'

'It wasn't bad, I think?'

'It seemed to me very clever.'

'Clever--yes, that's the word. It had a success, too. I have as good a
thing half done for the April number, but I've felt too heavy-hearted to
go on with it. The girls shall let you know when they are in town.'

Marian followed him into the passage, and watched him as he opened the
front door. When it had closed, she went back into the study for a few
minutes before rejoining her mother.

CHAPTER IX. INVITA MINERVA

After all, there came a day when Edwin Reardon found himself regularly
at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum of manuscript each
four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small hand; sixty written slips
of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent--thanks to the
astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide
spacing, frequency of blank pages--a passable three-hundred-page volume.
On an average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have
fifteen days for the volume, and forty-five for the completed book.

Forty-five days; an eternity in the looking forward. Yet the calculation
gave him a faint-hearted encouragement. At that rate he might have
his book sold by Christmas. It would certainly not bring him a hundred
pounds; seventy-five perhaps. But even that small sum would enable him
to pay the quarter's rent, and then give him a short time, if only two
or three weeks, of mental rest. If such rest could not be obtained all
was at an end with him. He must either find some new means of supporting
himself and his family, or--have done with life and its responsibilities
altogether.

The latter alternative was often enough before him. He seldom slept for
more than two or three consecutive hours in the night, and the time
of wakefulness was often terrible. The various sounds which marked the
stages from midnight to dawn had grown miserably familiar to him; worst
torture to his mind was the chiming and striking of clocks. Two of these
were in general audible, that of Marylebone parish church, and that of
the adjoining workhouse; the latter always sounded several minutes after
its ecclesiastical neighbour, and with a difference of note which seemed
to Reardon