esume his intention of reading what he had written.

However, the paper was accepted. It came out in The Wayside for March,
and Reardon received seven pounds ten for it. By that time he had
written another thing of the same gossipy kind, suggested by Pliny's
Letters. The pleasant occupation did him good, but there was no
possibility of pursuing this course. 'Margaret Home' would be published
in April; he might get the five-and-twenty pounds contingent upon a
certain sale, yet that could in no case be paid until the middle of the
year, and long before then he would be penniless. His respite drew to an
end.

But now he took counsel of no one; as far as it was possible he lived in
solitude, never seeing those of his acquaintances who were outside the
literary world, and seldom even his colleagues. Milvain was so busy that
he had only been able to look in twice or thrice since Christmas, and
Reardon nowadays never went to Jasper's lodgings.

He had the conviction that all was over with the happiness of his
married life, though how the events which were to express this ruin
would shape themselves he could not foresee. Amy was revealing that
aspect of her character to which he had been blind, though a practical
man would have perceived it from the first; so far from helping him to
support poverty, she perhaps would even refuse to share it with him.
He knew that she was slowly drawing apart; already there was a divorce
between their minds, and he tortured himself in uncertainty as to how
far he retained her affections. A word of tenderness, a caress, no
longer met with response from her; her softest mood was that of mere
comradeship. All the warmth of her nature was expended upon the child;
Reardon learnt how easy it is for a mother to forget that both parents
have a share in her offspring.

He was beginning to dislike the child. But for Willie's existence Amy
would still love him with undivided heart; not, perhaps, so passionately
as once, but still with lover's love. And Amy understood--or, at all
events, remarked--this change in him. She was aware that he seldom asked
a question about Willie, and that he listened with indifference when she
spoke of the little fellow's progress. In part offended, she was also in
part pleased.

But for the child, mere poverty, he said to himself, should never have
sundered them. In the strength of his passion he could have overcome all
her disappointments; and, indeed, but for that new c