ter--the brightness for which
there is no name among colours. Hymettus was of a soft misty warmth, a
something tending to purple, its ridges marked by exquisitely soft
and indefinite shadows, the rainbow coming right down in front. The
Acropolis simply glowed and blazed. As the sun descended all these
colours grew richer and warmer; for a moment the landscape was nearly
crimson. Then suddenly the sun passed into the lower stratum of cloud,
and the splendour died almost at once, except that there remained the
northern half of the rainbow, which had become double. In the west, the
clouds were still glorious for a time; there were two shaped like great
expanded wings, edged with refulgence.'

'Stop!' cried Biffen, 'or I shall clutch you by the throat. I warned you
before that I can't stand those reminiscences.'

'Live in hope. Scrape together twenty pounds, and go there, if you die
of hunger afterwards.'

'I shall never have twenty shillings,' was the despondent answer.

'I feel sure you will sell "Mr Bailey."'

'It's kind of you to encourage me; but if "Mr Bailey" is ever sold I
don't mind undertaking to eat my duplicate of the proofs.'

'But now, you remember what led me to that. What does a man care for any
woman on earth when he is absorbed in contemplation of that kind?'

'But it is only one of life's satisfactions.'

'I am only maintaining that it is the best, and infinitely preferable to
sexual emotion. It leaves, no doubt, no bitterness of any kind. Poverty
can't rob me of those memories. I have lived in an ideal world that was
not deceitful, a world which seems to me, when I recall it, beyond the
human sphere, bathed in diviner light.'

It was four or five days after this that Reardon, on going to his work
in City Road, found a note from Carter. It requested him to call at
the main hospital at half-past eleven the next morning. He supposed the
appointment had something to do with his business at Croydon, whither
he had been in the mean time. Some unfavourable news, perhaps; any
misfortune was likely.

He answered the summons punctually, and on entering the general office
was requested by the clerk to wait in Mr Carter's private room; the
secretary had not yet arrived. His waiting lasted some ten minutes, then
the door opened and admitted, not Carter, but Mrs Edmund Yule.

Reardon stood up in perturbation. He was anything but prepared, or
disposed, for an interview with this lady. She came towards him w