arden, wondering where on earth he was going to be able to raise
L30. He had intended to spend the night in town and look up some old
friends, but, foreseeing now the inevitable question, "What are you
doing?" he felt he had not the heart to explain that at present he was
debating the possibility of spending L30 in order to produce a book of
poems. All the people whom he would have been glad to see had held such
high hopes of him at Oxford, had prophesied for his career such
prosperity; and now when after fifteen months he emerged from his
retirement it was but to pay a man to include him in the Covent Garden
Series of Modern Poets. The rain came down faster, and a creeping fog
made more inhospitable the dusk of London. He thought of a quick train
somewhere about five o'clock, and in a sudden longing to be back in the
country and to sleep, however dark and frore the January night that
stretched between them, nearer to Pauline than here in this city of
drizzled fog, he took a cab to Paddington.

During the railway journey Guy contemplated various plans to raise the
money he wanted. He knew that his father at the cost of a long letter
would probably have given him the sum; but supposing a triumph lay
before him, all the sweets of it would have been robbed by paternal
help. Moreover, if the book were paid for thus, there would be a
consequent suspicion of all favorable criticism; it would never seem a
genuine book to his father, and the reviews would give him the
impression of being the work of well-disposed amateurs or of personal
friends. There was the alternative of borrowing the money from Michael
Fane; and then as the train went clanging through the night Guy made up
his mind to be under an obligation to nobody and to sacrifice all the
rest of his books if necessary that this new book might be born.

When he was back at Plashers Mead his resolution did not weaken; coldly
and unsentimentally he began to eviscerate the already mutilated
library. At the end of his task he had stacked upon the floor five
hundred volumes to be offered as a bargain to the bookseller who had
bought the others. All that was left, indeed, were the cheapest and most
ordinary editions of poets, one or two volumes of the greatest of all
like Rabelais and Cervantes, and the eternally read and most
companionable like Boswell and Gilbert White and Sir Thomas Browne. In
the determination that had seized him he rejoiced in his bare shelves,
so much e