«
    »I feel the same about your irritation. I can't see that I have given any
cause for it.«
    »Then we'll talk no more of the matter.«
    Reardon threw his manuscript aside, and opened a book. Amy never asked him
to resume his intention of reading what he had written.
    However, the paper was accepted. It came out in The Wayside for March, and
Reardon received seven pounds ten for it. By that time he had written another
thing of the same gossipy kind, suggested by Pliny's Letters. The pleasant
occupation did him good, but there was no possibility of pursuing this course.
»Margaret Home« would be published in April; he might get the five-and-twenty
pounds contingent upon a certain sale, yet that could in no case be paid until
the middle of the year, and long before then he would be penniless. His respite
drew to an end.
    But now he took counsel of no one; as far as it was possible he lived in
solitude, never seeing those of his acquaintances who were outside the literary
world, and seldom even his colleagues. Milvain was so busy that he had only been
able to look in twice or thrice since Christmas, and Reardon nowadays never went
to Jasper's lodgings.
    He had the conviction that all was over with the happiness of his married
life, though how the events which were to express this ruin would shape
themselves he could not foresee. Amy was revealing that aspect of her character
to which he had been blind, though a practical man would have perceived it from
the first; so far from helping him to support poverty, she perhaps would even
refuse to share it with him. He knew that she was slowly drawing apart; already
there was a divorce between their minds, and he tortured himself in uncertainty
as to how far he retained her affections. A word of tenderness, a caress, no
longer met with response from her; her softest mood was that of mere
comradeship. All the warmth of her nature was expended upon the child; Reardon
learnt how easy it is for a mother to forget that both parents have a share in
her offspring.
    He was beginning to dislike the child. But for Willie's existence Amy would
still love him with undivided heart; not, perhaps, so passionately as once, but
still with lover's love. And Amy understood - or, at all events, remarked - this
change in him. She was aware that he seldom asked a question about Willie, and
that he listened with indifference
