f him, "He's having
his portion in this life."

But it was not really so.

Then, in 1870, he bought that charming house, Mansfield, by the
Thames, which he rechristened Marsfield; and which he--with the help
of the Scatcherds and myself, for it became our hobby--made into one
of the most delightful abodes in England. It was the real home for
all of us; I really think it is one of the loveliest spots on earth.
It was a bargain, but it cost a lot of money; altogether, never was
money better spent--even as a mere investment. When I think of what
it is worth now! Je suis homme d'affaires!

What a house-warming that was on the very day that France and
Germany went to war; we little guessed what was to come for the
country we all loved so dearly, or we should not have been so glad.

I am conscious that all this is rather dull reading. Alas! Merry
England is a devilish dull place compared to foreign parts--and
success, respectability, and domestic bliss are the dullest things
to write--or read--about that I know--and with middle age to follow
too!

It was during that first summer at Marsfield that Barty told me the
extraordinary story of Martia, and I really thought he had gone mad.
For I knew him to be the most truthful person alive.

Even now I hardly know what to think, nor did Leah--nor did Barty
himself up to the day of his death.

He showed me all her letters, _which I may deem it advisable to
publish some day_: not only the Blaze suggestions for his books, and
all her corrections; things to occupy him for life--all, of course,
in his own handwriting; but many letters about herself, also written
in sleep and by his own hand; and the style is Barty's--not the
style in which he wrote his books, and which is not to be matched;
but that in which he wrote his Blaze letters to me.

If her story is true--and I never read a piece of documentary
evidence more convincing--these letters constitute the most
astonishing revelation ever yet vouchsafed to this earth.

But her story cannot be true!

That Barty's version of his relations with "The Martian" is
absolutely sincere it is impossible to doubt. He was quite
unconscious of the genesis of every book he ever wrote. His first
hint of every one of them was the elaborately worked out suggestion
he found by his bedside in the morning--written by himself in his
sleep during the preceding night, with his eyes wide open, while
more often than not his wife anxiously watched