And since he _was_ emerging from his retirement, there seemed no longer any reason why he should not mix again in the art world, and Sadler, who had come up to his studio on one or two occasions, induced him to show himself at some of the clubs. At the same time he began to cultivate again some of the smaller coteries of which he had once been so popular a light. Other men, too, began to look him up, and, best of all, an editor one day sent him an unhoped-for commission--half-a-dozen drawings for a magazine story by a widely-read author. On the whole he was well satisfied to get back into the world. It raised, or rather confirmed, him in his own esteem, and saved him--as he put it--from attaching too cheap a price to himself. He was thus able to meet the Robinsons from a real plane of vantage, and to purge his mind of that slight consciousness of charlatanism which had haunted him at the outset. Were he not taking ultimate success for granted, without a renewal of the more bitter side of the struggle, he would scarcely have resumed all these old relationships. Yet the precariousness of the future, summon his coolness and confidence as he might, was a thing to be actively, even desperately, reckoned with. The editor's cheque was a god-send, relieving him of immediate anxieties, but he dared not relax his efforts. His mornings were entirely devoted to the big canvas now, and he rose early to avail himself of every minute of light during these short wintry days. He worked with a passion and a concentration that he had never yet known. Every fibre of his body bent to the strain; every drop of his blood seemed to drain its life into this frenzy to achieve. Withal, a delightful sense of emancipation from the old tired vision; a splendid consciousness of some rich new store that had gathered in him during the long period he had lain fallow! Yet he shuddered and grew sick at the possibility that the Academy might still reject him! In that case, what had he to build upon beyond the coming fee for Miss Robinson's portrait? As the weeks went by, something of a panic began to overtake him; the future seemed to be bearing down on him grim and remorseless.