recovered from the blow, and to this day cannot speak of her without
tears in his eyes, yet when he came back to Oxford he seemed to have
found the answer to the riddle, and though older, sadder and graver
than before, had quite lost the restless dissatisfaction that for
some time had clouded his life. In a few months, moreover, I
noticed a fresh sign that he was out of the wood. Coming into his
rooms one day I found him sitting in the cushioned window-seat,
reading over and correcting some sheets of blue foolscap.

"At it again?" I asked.

He nodded.

"I mean to finish the first volume here. For the rest I must be in
London."

"Why?" I asked, a little curious as to this unknown art of novel-
making.

"Because," he replied, "one must be in the heart of things to
understand how Lynwood was affected by them."

"Lynwood! I believe you are always thinking of him!" (Lynwood was
the hero of his novel.)

"Well, so I am nearly--so I must be, if the book is to be any good."

"Read me what you have written," I said, throwing myself back in a
rickety but tolerably comfortable arm-chair which Derrick had
inherited with the rooms.