uddenly, a day or two afterwards, came news that, to some extent,
relieved my mind.

While the Bolderos were at breakfast, a cable arrived from the Editor.
It ran: "Unless half of manuscript is delivered to-day at London Office
will cancel contract." Adrian read it, frowned and handed it to Doria.
It seems that in all business matters she had his confidence.

"Well, dear?" she said, looking up at him.

He broke out angrily. "Did you ever hear such amazing insolence? I give
this pettifogging tradesman the privilege of publishing my novel in his
rubbishy periodical and he dares to dictate terms to me! Half a novel,
indeed! As if it were half a bale of calico. The besotted fool! As well
ask a clock-maker to deliver half a clock."

"Argument by analogy is rather dangerous," she said gently, seeking to
turn aside his wrath with a smile. "It's not quite the same thing. Can't
you give him something to go on with?"

"I can, but I won't. I'll see him damned first." He turned to the maid
and demanded a telegraph form.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to teach him a lesson. He thinks I'm going to be taken in by
his bluff and run round with a brown paper parcel to Fleet Street or
wherever his beastly office is. He's mistaken. There," he wrote the
cable hurriedly and read it aloud, "'Shall not deliver anything. Only
too glad to cancel contract.' He'll he the most surprised and disgusted
man in America!"

"Need you put it quite like that?" said Doria.

"It's the only way to make him understand. He has been buzzing round me
like a wasp for the past month. Now he's squashed. And now," said he,
getting up and lighting a cigarette, "I'm not going to do another stroke
of work for three months."

It was the news of this last announcement that relieved my mind: not the
story of Adrian's intolerable treatment of the editor, which was of a
piece with his ordinary attitude towards his own genius. The
capriciousness of the resolution startled me; but I approved
whole-heartedly. I would have counselled immediate change of scene, had
not Adrian anticipated my advice by rushing off then and there to Cook's
and taken tickets to Switzerland. Having some business in town, I
motored up with Barbara earlier than I need have done, and we saw them
off at Victoria Station. Adrian, in holiday spirits, talked rather
loudly. Now that he was free from the horror of that bestial vampire
sucking his blood--that was his way of referring to th