What should he do? He was becoming involved in serious embarrassments. Would it be possible to induce the publisher to withdraw the book from circulation and to receive back the fifty pounds? That was hardly possible. He had signed away all his rights in the novel, and the publisher had been to a considerable expense for paper, printing, binding, and advertising. He was roused from his troubled thoughts by seeing Miss Asphodel Vincent coming along the walk towards him. Her step had lost its wonted spring, her carriage its usual buoyancy. In a minute or two she would reach him. Would she deign to speak? He felt no compunction towards her. He had made her his heroine in the tale. By not a word had he cast a shadow over her character or her abilities. Indeed, he had pictured her as the highest ideal of an English girl. She might be flattered, she could not be offended. And yet there was no flattery in his pencil--he had sketched her in as she was. As she approached she noticed the young author. She did not hasten her step. She displayed a strange listlessness in her movements, and lack of vivacity in her eye. When she stood over against him, Joseph Leveridge rose and removed his hat. "An early promenade, Miss Vincent," he said. "Oh!" she said, "I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain of a great injury done to me." "You do me a high honour," exclaimed Joseph. "If I can do anything to alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me." "You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been done. You put me into your book." "Miss Vincent," protested Leveridge with vehemence, "if I have, what then? I have not in the least overcharged the colours, by a line caricatured you." It was in vain for him further to pretend not to be the author and to have merely read the book. "That may be, or it may not. But you have taken strange liberties with me in transferring me to your pages." "And you really recognised yourself?" "It is myself, my very self, who is there." "And yet you are here, before my humble self." "That is only my outer shell. All my individuality, all that goes to make up the Ego--I myself--has been taken from me and put into your book." "Surely that cannot be." "But it is so. I feel precisely as I suppose felt my doll when I was a child, when it became unstitched and all the bran ran out; it hung limp like a rag. But it is not bran you have deprived me of, it is my personality." "In my novel is your portraiture indeed--but you yourself are here," said Leveridge. "It is my very self, my noblest and best part, my moral and intellectual self, which has been carried off and put into your book." "This is quite impossible, Miss Vincent."