etters and newspaper clippings on the
study-table which he had just successfully defended from the camera of
the _Inglenook_. He took up an envelope bearing the name of a popular
weekly paper.

"I don't know that the _Inglenook_ would help much," he said, "but I
suppose this might."

Mrs. Linyard's eyes glowed with maternal avidity.

"What is it, Samuel?"

"A series of 'Scientific Sermons' for the Round-the-Gas-Log column of
_The Woman's World_. I believe that journal has a larger circulation
than any other weekly, and they pay in proportion."

He had not even asked the extent of Jack's indebtedness. It had been so
easy to relieve recent domestic difficulties by the timely production
of Harviss's two cheques, that it now seemed natural to get Mrs.
Linyard out of the room by promising further reinforcements. The
Professor had indignantly rejected Harviss's suggestion that he should
follow up his success by a second volume on the same lines. He had
sworn not to lend more than a passive support to the fraud of "The
Vital Thing"; but the temptation to free himself from Mrs. Linyard
prevailed over his last scruples, and within an hour he was at work on
the Scientific Sermons.

The Professor was not an unkind man. He really enjoyed making his
family happy; and it was his own business if his reward for so doing
was that it kept them out of his way. But the success of "The Vital
Thing" gave him more than this negative satisfaction. It enlarged his
own existence and opened new doors into other lives. The Professor,
during fifty virtuous years, had been cognizant of only two types of
women: the fond and foolish, whom one married, and the earnest and
intellectual, whom one did not. Of the two, he infinitely preferred the
former, even for conversational purposes. But as a social instrument
woman was unknown to him; and it was not till he was drawn into the
world on the tide of his literary success that he discovered the
deficiencies in his classification of the sex. Then he learned with
astonishment of the existence of a third type: the woman who is fond
without foolishness and intellectual without earnestness. Not that the
Professor inspired, or sought to inspire, sentimental emotions; but he
expanded in the warm atmosphere of personal interest which some of his
new acquaintances contrived to create about him. It was delightful to
talk of serious things in a setting of frivolity, and to be personal
without being domestic.