work at the Reading-room, but at the same time he thought often
of the novelist's suggestion, and before long had written two or three short
stories. No editor would accept them; but he continued to practise himself in
that art, and by degrees came to fancy that, after all, perhaps he had some
talent for fiction. It was significant, however, that no native impulse had
directed him to novel-writing. His intellectual temper was that of the student,
the scholar, but strongly blended with a love of independence which had always
made him think with distaste of a teacher's life. The stories he wrote were
scraps of immature psychology - the last thing a magazine would accept from an
unknown man.
    His money dwindled, and there came a winter during which he suffered much
from cold and hunger. What a blessed refuge it was, there under the great dome,
when he must else have sat in his windy garret with the mere pretence of a fire!
The Reading-room was his true home; its warmth enwrapped him kindly; the
peculiar odour of its atmosphere - at first a cause of headache - grew dear and
delightful to him. But he could not sit here until his last penny should be
spent. Something practical must be done, and practicality was not his strong
point.
    Friends in London he had none; but for an occasional conversation with his
landlady he would scarcely have spoken a dozen words in a week. His disposition
was the reverse of democratic, and he could not make acquaintances below his own
intellectual level. Solitude fostered a sensitiveness which to begin with was
extreme; the lack of stated occupation encouraged his natural tendency to dream
and procrastinate and hope for the improbable. He was a recluse in the midst of
millions, and viewed with dread the necessity of going forth to fight for daily
food.
    Little by little he had ceased to hold any correspondence with his former
friends at Hereford. The only person to whom he still wrote and from whom he
still heard was his mother's father - an old man who lived at Derby, retired
from the business of a draper, and spending his last years pleasantly enough
with a daughter who had remained single. Edwin had always been a favourite with
his grandfather, though they had met only once or twice during the past eight
years. But in writing he did not allow it to be understood that he was in actual
want, and he felt that he must come to dire extremities before he could bring
himself to beg assistance.
    He had begun to answer advertisements, but the state of