“My dear Mrs. Branston, I really am not well enough for visiting.”

“But dining with us does not come under the head of visiting.  We will be quite alone, if you wish it.  I shall be hurt if you refuse to come.”

“If you put it in that way, I cannot refuse; but I fear you will find me wretched company.”

“I am not afraid of that.  And now I must ask you to forgive me for having wasted so much of your time, before I say good-morning.”

“There has been no time of mine wasted.  I have learned to know your generous heart even better than I knew it before, and I think I always knew that it was a noble one.  Believe me, I am not ungrateful or indifferent to so much goodness.”

He accompanied her downstairs, and through the courts and passages to the place where she had left her cab, in spite of the ticket-porter, who was hanging about ready to act as escort.  He saw her safely seated in the hackney vehicle, and then walked slowly back to his chambers, thinking over the interview which had just concluded.

“Poor little soul,” he said softly to himself; “dear little soul!  There are men who would go to the end of the world for a woman like that; yes, if she had not a sixpence.  And to think that I, who thought myself so strong in the wisdom of the world, should have let such a prize slip through my fingers?  For what?  For a fancy, for a caprice that has brought confusion and shame upon me—­disappointment and regret.”

He breathed a profound sigh.  From first to last life had been more or less a disappointment to this man.  He had lived alone; lived for himself, despising the ambitious aims and lofty hopes of other men, thinking the best prizes this world can give scarcely worth that long struggle which is so apt to end in failure; perfect success was so rare a result, it seemed to him.  He made a rough calculation of his chances in any given line when he was still fresh from college, and finding the figures against him, gave up all thoughts of doing great things.  By-and-by, when his creditors grew pressing and it was necessary for him to earn money in some way, he found that it was no trouble to him to write; so he wrote with a spasmodic kind of industry, but a forty-horse power when he chose to exercise it.  For a long time he had no thought of winning name or fame in literature.  It was only of late it had dawned upon him that he had wasted labour and talent, out of which a wiser man would have created for himself a reputation; and that reputation is worth something, if only as a means of making money.

This conviction once arrived at, he had worked hard at a book which he thought must needs make some impression upon the world whenever he could afford time to complete it.  In the meanwhile his current work occupied so much of his life, that he was fain to lay the magnum opus aside every now and then, and it still needed a month or two of quiet labour.