he had attempted to remove when he went home in the evening, but though he
often worked till daybreak, he did not achieve much. The very knowledge
that he must come to rehearsal with the re-written scene seemed to produce
in him a sort of mental paralysis, and, striking the table with his fist,
he would get up, and a thought would cross his mind of how he might escape
from this torture. After one terrible night, in which he feared his brain
was really giving way, he went down to the theatre and dismissed the
company, for he had resolved to return to Ashwood and spend another autumn
and another winter re-writing _The Gipsy_. If it did not come right then,
he would bother no more about it. Why should he? There was so much else in
life besides literature. He had plenty of money, and was determined in any
case to enjoy himself. So did his thoughts run as he leaned back on the
cushions of a first-class carriage, glancing casually through the evening
paper. Presently his eye was caught by a paragraph narrating an odd
calamity which had overtaken a scene carpenter, an honest, respectable,
sober, hard-working man, who had fulfilled all social obligations as
perfectly as the most exacting could desire, until the day he had conceived
the idea of a machine for the better exhibition of advertisements on the
hoardings. His system was based on the roller-towel. The roller was moved
by clockwork, and the advertisements went round like the towel. At first he
spent his spare time and his spare money upon it, but as the hobby took
possession of him, he devoted all his time and all his money to it; then he
pawned his clothes, and then he raised money on the furniture; the brokers
came in, and finally the poor fellow was taken to a lunatic asylum, and his
wife and family were thrown on the parish. The story impressed Hubert
strangely. He saw an analogy between himself and the crazy inventor, and he
asked himself if he would go on re-writing _The Gipsy_ until he went out of
his mind. 'Even if I do,' he thought, 'I can hurt no one but myself. No one
else is dependent on me; my hobby can hurt no one but myself.' These
forebodings passed away, and his mind filled up with schemes of work. He