When I had his letter of thanks I glanced through it
hastily and then burnt it, and tried to stamp out the re-awakened
memory of him from my brain. Weeks followed weeks of the same
colourless, monotonous existence; some of them were wasted in
physical ill-health, some in mental inactivity, but slowly a
manuscript grew and grew again into being.
The slow winter wore away, and the ice froze or the fog pressed on
the long French windows of my room. My father invited me to run over
and spend Christmas with him, but I dreaded the interruption and the
delay in the work. I stayed and pressed forward with it, and in the
last days of March the whole book stood complete.
It was one of the first nights of May. The first warm, spring-like
night of the season, and the seats at the Concert des Ambassadeurs
were crowded by the Parisians consuming their brandied cherries
under the canopy of fluttering light green leaves of the opening
limes. I sat, one of the audience, and heard the band clashing, and
watched the dancers flit on and off the glittering diminutive stage,
with indifferent eyes and ears.
I was thinking of my success. The band might thunder its hardest,
but it could not drown the publisher's voice in my ears, which
repeated over and over the words I had heard that morning. "Yes,
M'sieur, your book has been accepted.
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