New Grub Street. George Gissing

      ‘What is it?’ she answered from the bedroom. ‘I’m busy with Willie.’

      ‘Come as soon as you are free.’

      In ten minutes she appeared. There was apprehension on her face; she feared he was going to lament his inability to work. Instead of that, he told her joyfully that the first volume was finished.

      ‘Thank goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘Are you going to do any more to-night?’

      ‘I think not—if you will come and sit with me.’

      ‘Willie doesn’t seem very well. He can’t get to sleep.’

      ‘You would like to stay with him?’

      ‘A little while. I’ll come presently.’

      She closed the door. Reardon brought a high-backed chair to the fireside, and allowed himself to forget the two volumes that had still to be struggled through, in a grateful sense of the portion that was achieved. In a few minutes it occurred to him that it would be delightful to read a scrap of the ‘Odyssey’; he went to the shelves on which were his classical books, took the desired volume, and opened it where Odysseus speaks to Nausicaa:

      ‘For never yet did I behold one of mortals like to thee, neither man nor woman; I am awed as I look upon thee. In Delos once, hard by the altar of Apollo, I saw a young palm-tree shooting up with even such a grace.’

      Yes, yes; THAT was not written at so many pages a day, with a workhouse clock clanging its admonition at the poet’s ear. How it freshened the soul! How the eyes grew dim with a rare joy in the sounding of those nobly sweet hexameters!

      Amy came into the room again.

      ‘Listen,’ said Reardon, looking up at her with a bright smile. ‘Do you remember the first time that I read you this?’

      And he turned the speech into free prose. Amy laughed.

      ‘I remember it well enough. We were alone in the drawing-room; I had told the others that they must make shift with the dining-room for that evening. And you pulled the book out of your pocket unexpectedly. I laughed at your habit of always carrying little books about.’

      The cheerful news had brightened her. If she had been summoned to hear lamentations her voice would not have rippled thus soothingly. Reardon thought of this, and it made him silent for a minute.

      ‘The habit was ominous,’ he said, looking at her with an uncertain smile. ‘A practical literary man doesn’t do such things.’

      ‘Milvain, for instance. No.’

      With curious frequency she mentioned the name of Milvain. Her unconsciousness in doing so prevented Reardon from thinking about the fact; still, he had noted it.

      ‘Did you understand the phrase slightingly?’ he asked.

      ‘Slightingly? Yes, a little, of course. It always has that sense on your lips, I think.’

      In the light of this answer he mused upon her readily-offered instance. True, he had occasionally spoken of Jasper with something less than respect, but Amy was not in the habit of doing so.