At last, I ventured
to try and withdraw my stiffening arm without rousing him, but at
the first movement his fingers tightened and his groans recommenced.
After a time my hunger passed into drowsiness. I leant forward
gradually, and at last my head sank down on the edge of his bed, and
I drifted into oblivion.
CHAPTER IV.
May had come round again. The days and weeks had glided by in a
monotony of work, varied by feverish blanks when I could do nothing,
and the pile of manuscript lay growing dusty in its corner. Then at
last the day arrived when the final line was written and the whole
despatched. That was three months back, three months of anxious
waiting, in which Howard had chaffed me daily on my looks and
health.
"You're dwindling to a most interesting skeleton, Vic," he used to
say. "Catch me bothering myself about anything I wrote in the same
way."
Now, however, it was over. I had just left the publisher's office.
The book had been accepted, and I was a free man. A gush of fresh
life ran through me and stirred in my veins in response to the fresh
life of spring that seemed in the sunny air, in the green leaves
fluttering round the Bourse, in the white butterflies that floated
across the dusty asphalt.
When I got back I found Howard half asleep in the armchair. He sat
up as I came in, and regarded me with a confused stare.
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