His own fault. A man has no business to fail; least of all can he
expect others to have time to look back upon him or pity him if
he sink under the stress of conflict. Those behind will trample
over his body; they can't help it; they themselves are borne
onwards by resistless pressure.
He slept for a few hours, then lay watching the light of dawn as
it revealed his desolation.
The morning's post brought him a large heavy envelope, the aspect
of which for a moment puzzled him. But he recognised the
handwriting, and understood. The editor of The Wayside, in a
pleasantly-written note, begged to return the paper on Pliny's
Letters which had recently been submitted to him; he was sorry it
did not strike him as quite so interesting as the other
contributions from Reardon's pen.
This was a trifle. For the first time he received a rejected
piece of writing without distress; he even laughed at the
artistic completeness of the situation. The money would have been
welcome, but on that very account he might have known it would
not come.
The cart that was to transfer his property to the room in
Islington arrived about mid-day.
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