Hitherto it was only the problems of his heart that had been thus divinely dealt with; he had been left to struggle hopelessly with the problems of his life; and of these Flossie was the most insoluble.  And now that he had given up thinking of her, had abandoned her to her own mysterious workings, it too had been solved and in the same simple, inevitable way.  His contempt for Flossie’s methods could not blind him to the beneficence of the result.

He wrote to her that night to the effect that he gladly and entirely acquiesced in her decision; but that he should have thought that he and not Mr. Spinks had been entitled to the first intimation of it.  He had no doubt, however, that she had done the best and wisest thing.  He forbore to add “for both of us.”  His chivalry still persisted in regarding Flossie as a deeply injured person.  He had wronged her from the beginning.  Had he not laid on her, first the burden of his passion, and yet again the double burden of his genius and his honour?  A heavier load, that, and wholly unfitted for the poor little back that would have had to bear it.  It never occurred to him that he had been in any way the victim of Flossie’s powerful instincts.  It was Maddox who said that Mr. Spinks had made himself immortal by his marriage; that he should be put on the Civil List for his services to literature.

Of Rickman’s place in literature there could be no question for the next two or three years.  He foresaw that the all-important thing was his place on The Planet, his place on Metropolis, his place (if he could find one) on any other paper.  He had looked to journalism for the means to support a wife, and journalism alone could maintain him in his struggle with Pilkington.  Whether Maddox was right or wrong in his opinion of the disastrous influence of Flossie, there could be no doubt that for the present Rickman’s genius had no more formidable rival than his honour.  If it is perdition to a great tragic dramatist when passion impels him to marry on three hundred a year, it can hardly be desirable that conscience should constrain him to raise seven hundred and fifty pounds in three years.  Fate seemed bent in forcing him to live his tragedies rather than write them; but Rickman, free of Flossie, faced the desperate prospect with the old reckless spirit of his youth.

For the first year the prospect did not look so very desperate.  He had found cheap rooms unfurnished in Torrington Square where the houses are smaller and less sumptuous than Mrs. Downey’s.  He had succeeded in letting the little house in Ealing, where the abominable furniture that had nearly cost so dear justified its existence by adding a small sum to his income.  He had benefited indirectly by Rankin’s greatness; for Rankin seldom contributed anything to The Planet now beyond his lively column once a week; and Rickman was frequently called on to fill his place. The Planet was good for