“Friends!  Gossip!  Newspaper misreports!  Surely such things are not stronger than love!  I can only believe that you never loved me.”

A blush drove the pallor from her face.

“After what has passed?” she said faintly.  “Martin, you do not know what you are saying.  I am not common.”

“You see, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you,” Norman blurted out, starting on with her.

Martin stood aside and let them pass, fumbling unconsciously in his coat pocket for the tobacco and brown papers that were not there.

It was a long walk to North Oakland, but it was not until he went up the steps and entered his room that he knew he had walked it.  He found himself sitting on the edge of the bed and staring about him like an awakened somnambulist.  He noticed “Overdue” lying on the table and drew up his chair and reached for his pen.  There was in his nature a logical compulsion toward completeness.  Here was something undone.  It had been deferred against the completion of something else.  Now that something else had been finished, and he would apply himself to this task until it was finished.  What he would do next he did not know.  All that he did know was that a climacteric in his life had been attained.  A period had been reached, and he was rounding it off in workman-like fashion.  He was not curious about the future.  He would soon enough find out what it held in store for him.  Whatever it was, it did not matter.  Nothing seemed to matter.

For five days he toiled on at “Overdue,” going nowhere, seeing nobody, and eating meagrely.  On the morning of the sixth day the postman brought him a thin letter from the editor of The Parthenon.  A glance told him that “Ephemera” was accepted.  “We have submitted the poem to Mr. Cartwright Bruce,” the editor went on to say, “and he has reported so favorably upon it that we cannot let it go.  As an earnest of our pleasure in publishing the poem, let me tell you that we have set it for the August number, our July number being already made up.  Kindly extend our pleasure and our thanks to Mr. Brissenden.  Please send by return mail his photograph and biographical data.  If our honorarium is unsatisfactory, kindly telegraph us at once and state what you consider a fair price.”

Since the honorarium they had offered was three hundred and fifty dollars, Martin thought it not worth while to telegraph.  Then, too, there was Brissenden’s consent to be gained.  Well, he had been right, after all.  Here was one magazine editor who knew real poetry when he saw it.  And the price was splendid, even though it was for the poem of a century.  As for Cartwright Bruce, Martin knew that he was the one critic for whose opinions Brissenden had any respect.