"'A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers,'" he muttered,
remembering his Henly. "'Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.' It
is--a blunder and a shame."

CHAPTER XLIII

"The Shame of the Sun" was published in October. As Martin cut the cords
of the express package and the half-dozen complimentary copies from the
publishers spilled out on the table, a heavy sadness fell upon him. He
thought of the wild delight that would have been his had this happened a
few short months before, and he contrasted that delight that should have
been with his present uncaring coldness. His book, his first book, and
his pulse had not gone up a fraction of a beat, and he was only sad. It
meant little to him now. The most it meant was that it might bring some
money, and little enough did he care for money.

He carried a copy out into the kitchen and presented it to Maria.

"I did it," he explained, in order to clear up her bewilderment. "I
wrote it in the room there, and I guess some few quarts of your vegetable
soup went into the making of it. Keep it. It's yours. Just to remember
me by, you know."

He was not bragging, not showing off. His sole motive was to make her
happy, to make her proud of him, to justify her long faith in him. She
put the book in the front room on top of the family Bible. A sacred
thing was this book her lodger had made, a fetich of friendship. It
softened the blow of his having been a laundryman, and though she could
not understand a line of it, she knew that every line of it was great.
She was a simple, practical, hard-working woman, but she possessed faith
in large endowment.

Just as emotionlessly as he had received "The Shame of the Sun" did he
read the reviews of it that came in weekly from the clipping bureau. The
book was making a hit, that was evident. It meant more gold in the money
sack. He could fix up Lizzie, redeem all his promises, and still have
enough left to build his grass-walled castle.

Singletree, Darnley & Co. had cautiously brought out an edition of
fifteen hundred copies, but the first reviews had started a second
edition of twice the size through the presses; and ere this was delivered
a third edition of five thousand had been ordered. A London firm made
arrangements by cable for an English edition, and hot-footed upon this
came the news of French, German, and Scandinavian translations in
progress. The attack upon the Maeterlinck school could not