'I suppose he thinks it's no business of his.'

Jasper mused over the letter from his friend.

'Ten years hence,' he said, 'if Reardon is still alive, I shall
be lending him five-pound notes.'

A smile of irony rose to Maud's lips. Dora laughed.

'To be sure! To be sure!' exclaimed their brother. 'You have no
faith. But just understand the difference between a man like
Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical
artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions,
or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I--
well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that's a
great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is
a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere
cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful
tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one
kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with
something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible
sources of income. Whatever he has to sell he'll get payment for
it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical
selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct
profits. Now, look you: if I had been in Reardon's place, I'd
have made four hundred at least out of "The Optimist"; I should
have gone shrewdly to work with magazines and newspapers and
foreign publishers, and--all sorts of people. Reardon can't do
that kind of thing, he's behind his age; he sells a manuscript as
if he lived in Sam Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of