DURING the ensuing weeks the letters grew fewer and fewer, and Betton foresaw the approach of the fatal day when his secretary, in common decency¹, would have to say: “I can’t draw my pay for doing nothing.”

What a triumph for Vyse!

The thought was intolerable, and Betton cursed his weakness in not having dismissed the fellow before such a possibility arose.

“If I tell him I’ve no use for him now, he’ll see straight through it, of course; — and then, hang it, he looks so poor!”

This consideration came after the other, but Betton, in rearranging them, put it first, because he thought it looked better there, and also because he immediately perceived its value in justifying² a plan of action that was beginning to take shape in his mind.

“Poor devil, I’m damned if I don’t do it for him!” said Betton, sitting down at his desk.

Three or four days later he sent word to Vyse that he didn’t care to go over the letters any longer, and that they would once more be carried directly to the library.

The next time he lounged in, on his way to his morning ride, he found his secretary’s pen in active motion.

“A lot to-day,” Vyse told him cheerfully.

His tone irritated Betton: it had the inane³ optimism of the physician reassuring⁴ a discouraged patient.

“Oh, Lord — I thought it was almost over,” groaned⁷ the novelist.

“No: they’ve just got their second wind. Here’s one from a Chicago publisher — never heard the name — offering you thirty per cent. on your next novel, with an advance royalty⁸ of twenty thousand. And here’s a chap who wants to syndicate it for a bunch of Sunday papers: big offer, too. That’s from Ann Arbor⁹. And this — oh, this one’s funny!”

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