that it contained as many falsehoods as lines, and he was
ashamed of himself for having written so. But he could not pen a letter of
retraction, and there remained with him a new cause of exasperated wretchedness.
    Excepting the people with whom he came in contact at the hospital, he had no
society but that of Biffen. The realist visited him once a week, and this
friendship grew closer than it had been in the time of Reardon's prosperity.
Biffen was a man of so much natural delicacy, that there was a pleasure in
imparting to him the details of private sorrow; though profoundly sympathetic,
he did his best to oppose Reardon's harsher judgments of Amy, and herein he gave
his friend a satisfaction which might not be avowed.
    »I really do not see,« he exclaimed, as they sat in the garret one night of
midsummer, »how your wife would have acted otherwise. Of course I am quite
unable to judge the attitude of her mind, but I think, I can't help thinking,
from what I knew of her, that there has been strictly a misunderstanding between
you. It was a hard and miserable thing that she should have to leave you for a
time, and you couldn't face the necessity in a just spirit. Don't you think
there's some truth in this way of looking at it?«
    »As a woman, it was her part to soften the hateful necessity; she made it
worse.«
    »I'm not sure that you don't demand too much of her. Unhappily, I know
little or nothing of delicately-bred women, but I have a suspicion that one
oughtn't to expect heroism in them, any more than in the women of the lower
classes. I think of women as creatures to be protected. Is a man justified in
asking them to be stronger than himself?«
    »Of course,« replied Reardon, »there's no use in demanding more than a
character is capable of. But I believed her of finer stuff. My bitterness comes
of the disappointment.«
    »I suppose there were faults of temper on both sides, and you saw at least
only each other's weaknesses.«
    »I saw the truth, which had always been disguised from me.«
    Biffen persisted in looking doubtful, and in secret Reardon thanked him for
it.
    As the realist progressed with his novel, »Mr Bailey, Grocer,« he read the
chapters to Reardon, not only for his own satisfaction, but in great part