When would all this material be published?

Mr. Eames had not the faintest idea. Meanwhile he calmly went on
collecting and collecting, and collecting. Something might turn up, one
of these days. Everybody with the slightest pretensions to scholarship
was interested in his work; many friends had made him offers of
pecuniary assistance towards the printing of a book which could not be
expected to be a source of profit to its publisher; the wealthy and
good-natured Mr. Keith, in particular, used to complain savagely and
very sincerely at not being allowed to assist to the extent of a
hundred or two. There were days on which he seemed to yield to these
arguments; days when he expanded and gave rein to his fancy, smiling in
anticipation of that noble volume--the golden Latinity of Monsignor
Perrelli enriched with twenty-five years' patient labour on the part of
himself; days when he would go so far as to discuss prospective
contracts, and bindings and photogravures, and margins, and paper.
Everything, of course, was to be of appropriate quality--not
pretentious, but distinguished. Oh, yes! A book of that kind--it must
have a cachet of its own. . . .

Then, suddenly, he would observe that he was joking; only joking.

The true Mr. Eames revealed and reasserted himself. He shrank from the
idea. He closed up like a flower in the chill of night-fall. He was not
going to put himself under obligations to anybody. He would keep his
sense of personal independence, even if it entailed the sacrifice of a
life's ambition. Owe no man anything! The words rang in his ears. They
were his father's words. Owe no man anything! They were that
gentleman's definition of a gentleman--a definition which was cordially