’Really?  I’ve been there every year of my life till this.  One gets into the way of thinking of luxuries as necessities.  I tell you what it is.  If I sell my book as soon as it’s done, we’ll have a few days somewhere on the south coast together.’

Mr. Spicer betrayed uneasiness.

‘I should like it much,’ he murmured, ’but I fear, Mr. Goldthorpe, I greatly fear I can’t afford it.’

’Oh, but I mean that you shall go with me as my guest!  But for you, Mr. Spicer, I might never have got my book written at all.’

’I feel it an honour, sir, I assure you, to have a literary man in my house,’ was the genial reply.  ’And you think the work will soon be finished, sir?’

Mr. Spicer always spoke of his tenant’s novel as ’the work’—­which on his lips had a very large and respectful sound.

‘About a fortnight more,’ answered Goldthorpe with grave intensity.

The heat continued.  As he lay awake before getting up, eager to finish his book, yet dreading the torrid temperature of his room, which made the brain sluggish and the hand slow, Goldthorpe saw how two or three energetic spiders had begun to spin webs once more at the corners of the ceiling; now and then he heard the long buzzing of a fly entangled in one of these webs.  The same thing was happening in Mr. Spicer’s chamber.  It did not seem worth while to brush the new webs away.

‘When you come to think of it, sir,’ said the landlord, ’it’s the spiders who are the real owners of these houses.  When I go away, they’ll be pulled down; they’re not fit for human habitation.  Only the spiders are really at home here, and the fact is, sir, I don’t feel I have the right to disturb them.  As a man of imagination, Mr. Goldthorpe, you’ll understand my thoughts!’

Only with a great effort was the novel finished.  Goldthorpe had lost his appetite (not, perhaps, altogether a disadvantage), and he could not sleep; a slight fever seemed to be constantly upon him.  But this work was a question of life and death to him, and he brought it to an end only a few days after the term he had set himself.  The complete manuscript was exhibited to Mr. Spicer, who expressed his profound sense of the privilege.  Then, without delay, Goldthorpe took it to the publishing house in which he had most hope.

The young author could now do nothing but wait, and, under the circumstances, waiting meant torture.  His money was all but exhausted; if he could not speedily sell the book, his position would be that of a mere pauper.  Supported thus long by the artist’s enthusiasm, he fell into despondency, saw the dark side of things.  To be sure, his mother (a widow in narrow circumstances) had written pressing him to take a holiday ’at home,’ but he dreaded the thought of going penniless to his mother’s house, and there, perchance, receiving bad news about his book.  An ugly feature of the situation was that he continued to feel anything but well; indeed,