that would have been excuse enough if people had called it a failure.'

'People! People!'

'We can't live in solitude, Edwin, though really we are not far
from it.' He did not dare to make any reply to this. Amy was so
exasperatingly womanlike in avoiding the important issue to which he
tried to confine her; another moment, and his tone would be that of
irritation. So he turned away and sat down to his desk, as if he had
some thought of resuming work.

'Will you come and have some supper?' Amy asked, rising.

'I have been forgetting that to-morrow morning's chapter has still to be
thought out.'

'Edwin, I can't think this book will really be so poor. You couldn't
possibly give all this toil for no result.'

'No; not if I were in sound health. But I am far from it.'

'Come and have supper with me, dear, and think afterwards.'

He turned and smiled at her.

'I hope I shall never be able to resist an invitation from you, sweet.'

The result of all this was, of course, that he sat down in anything but
the right mood to his work next morning. Amy's anticipation of criticism
had made it harder than ever for him to labour at what he knew to be
bad. And, as ill-luck would have it, in a day or two he caught his
first winter's cold. For several years a succession of influenzas,
sore-throats, lumbagoes, had tormented him from October to May; in
planning his present work, and telling himself that it must be finished
before Christmas, he had not lost sight of these possible interruptions.
But he said to himself: 'Other men have worked hard in seasons of
illness; I must do the same.' All very well, but Reardon did not belong
to the heroic class. A feverish cold now put his powers and resolution
to the test. Through one hideous day he nailed himself to the desk--and
wrote a quarter of a page. The next day Amy would not let him rise from
bed; he was wretchedly ill. In the night he had talked about his work
deliriously, causing her no slight alarm.

'If this goes on,' she said to him in the morning, 'you'll have brain
fever. You must rest for two or three days.'

'Teach me how to. I wish I could.'

Rest had indeed become out of the question. For two days he could not
write, but the result upon his mind was far worse than if he had been at
the desk. He looked a haggard creature when he again sat down with the
accustomed blank slip before him.

The second volume ought to have been much easier work than the first; it
prove