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refer the Wunder, please.' 'It's gone, my boy.' 'Gone?' 'Wanted a little cash.' Biffen uttered a sound in which remonstrance and sympathy were blended. 'I'm sorry to hear that; very sorry. Well, this must do. Now, I want to know how you scan this chorus in the "Oedipus Rex."' Reardon took the volume, considered, and began to read aloud with metric emphasis. 'Choriambics, eh?' cried the other. 'Possible, of course; but treat them as Ionics a minore with an anacrusis, and see if they don't go better.' He involved himself in terms of pedantry, and with such delight that his eyes gleamed. Having delivered a technical lecture, he began to read in illustration, producing quite a different effect from that of the rhythm as given by his friend. And the reading was by no means that of a pedant, rather of a poet. For half an hour the two men talked Greek metres as if they lived in a world where the only hunger known could be satisfied by grand or sweet cadences. They had first met in an amusing way. Not long after the publication of his book 'On Neutral Ground' Reardon was spending a week at Hastings. A rainy day drove him to the circulating library, and as he was looking along the shelves for something readable a voice near at hand asked the attendant if he had anything 'by Edwin Reardon.' The novelist turned in astonishment; that any casual mortal should inquire for his books seemed incredible. Of course there was nothing by that author in the library, and he who had asked the question walked out again. On the morrow Reardon encountered this same man at a lonely part of the shore; he looked at him, and spoke a word or two of common civility; they got into conversation, with the result that Edwin told the story of yesterday. The stranger introduced himself as Harold Biffen, an author in a small way, and a teacher whenever he could get pupils; an abusive review had interested him in Reardon's novels, but as yet he knew nothing of them but the names. Their tastes were found to be in many respects sympathetic, and after returning to London they saw each other frequently. Biffen was always in dire poverty, and lived in the oddest places; he had seen harder trials than even Reardon himself. The teaching by which he partly lived was of a kind quite unknown to the respectable tutorial world. In these days of examinations, numbers of men in a poor position--clerks chiefly--conceive a hope that by 'passing' this,
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