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,