d hesitated. "No--I think my duty is to my work."

He passed into the adjoining room, which was his bedroom, and shut the
door. Here at his table, he passed all of the hours that he spent in the
house, except after supper, when he did his work in the sitting-room
with Nicolovius. He felt that, in honor, he owed some companionship, of
the body at least, to the old man in exchange for the run of the house,
and his evenings were his conscientious concession to his social duty.
But sometimes he felt the surprising and wholly irrational impulse to
concede more, to give the old man a larger measure of society than he
was, so to say, paying for. He felt it now as he seated himself
methodically and opened his table drawer.

From a purely selfish point of view, which was the only point of view
from which such a compact need be considered, he could hardly think that
his new domestic arrangement was a success. Greater comforts he had, of
course, but it is not upon comforts that the world's work hangs. The
important facts were that he was paying as much as he had paid at Mrs.
Paynter's, and was enjoying rather less privacy. He and Nicolovius were
friends of convenience only. Yet somehow the old professor managed to
obtrude himself perpetually upon his consciousness. The young man began
to feel an annoying sense of personal responsibility toward him, an
impulse which his reason rejected utterly.

He was aware that, personally, he wished himself back at Mrs. Paynter's
and the Scriptorium. A free man, in possession of this knowledge, would
immediately pack up and return. But that was just the trouble. He who
had always, hitherto, been the freest man in the world, appeared no
longer to be free. He was aware that he would find it very difficult to
walk into the sitting-room at this moment, and tell Nicolovius that he
was going to leave. The old man would probably make a scene. The
irritating thing about it was that Nicolovius, being as solitary in the
great world as he himself, actually _minded_ his isolation, and was
apparently coming to depend upon _him_.

But after all, he was contented here, and his work was prospering
largely. The days of his preparation for his _Post_ labors were
definitely over. He no longer had to read or study; he stood upon his
feet, and carried his editorial qualifications under his hat. His duties
as assistant editor occupied him but four or five hours a day; some
three hours a day--the allotment was inex