de in the moment of withdrawing his
hand from Jewdwine's.

"Who's your publisher?" called out Jewdwine.

Rickman laughed as the night received him. "Vaughan!" he shouted from
the garden gate.

"Now, what on earth," said Jewdwine, "could have been his motive for
not consulting me?" He had not got the clue to the hesitation and
secrecy of the young man's behaviour. He did not know that there were
three things which Rickman desired at any cost to keep pure--his
genius, his friendship for Horace Jewdwine, and his love for Lucia
Harden.

CHAPTER XL

The end of May found Rickman still at Mrs. Downey's, established on
the second floor in a glory that exceeded the glory of Mr. Blenkinsop.
He had now not only a bedroom, but a study, furnished with a
simplicity that had the effect of luxury, and lined from floor to
ceiling with his books. Mrs. Downey had agreed that Mr. Rickman
should, whenever the mysterious fancy took him, have his meals served
to him in his own apartment after the high manner of Mr. Blenkinsop;
and it was under protest that she accepted any compensation for the
break thus made in the triumphal order of the Dinner.

Here then at last, he was absolutely alone and free. Feeling perhaps
how nearly it had lost him, or impressed by the sudden change in his
position, the boarding-house revered this privacy of Rickman's as a
sacred thing. Not even Mr. Soper would have dared to violate his
virgin leisure. The charm of it was unbroken, it was even heightened
by the inaudible presence of Miss Roots in her den on the same floor.
Miss Roots indeed was the tie that bound him to Mrs. Downey's;
otherwise the dream of his affluence would have been chambers in
Westminster or the Temple. For his income, in its leap from zero to a
fluctuating two hundred a year, appeared to him as boundless
affluence. To be sure, Jewdwine had expressly stated that it would not
be permanent, but this he had understood to be merely a delicate way
of referring to his former imperfect record of sobriety. And he had
become rich not only in money but in time. Rickman's had demanded an
eight or even a ten hours' day; the office of _The Museion_ claimed
him but five hours of four days in the week. From five o'clock on
Thursday evening till eleven on Monday morning, whatever work remained
for him to do could be done in his own time and his own temper.

Much of the leisure time at his disposal he spent in endeavouring to
follow the Harden