Contrary to explicit resolve, in short, he had been making a fresh attempt at his new novel, hoping--rather weakly--that his mind wasn't quite so unsettled as he secretly knew it was. And, once more, he had been well punished for his rashness. Symptoms of weakness having developed increasingly through the week just past, on Monday evening Charles took his medicine, just before supper. Ten thousand words of brand-new manuscript lay in his drawer there; and he would be lucky if he could save a thousand of them for the novel that should be. Of the "line" taken by this second abortive effort, the less said the better. It suffices to suggest that if Mary Wing had been a totally different sort of person, it might never have been undertaken at all. Of all ways of spending the time known among men, unquestionably the most abominable, the most nerve-wrecking and devilish, is Thinking up a Book. Charles smoked box after box of cigarettes, couldn't sleep at night, talked in his sleep when he did, and was growing a scowl between his brows almost as dark as poor Two-Book McGee's--the interesting Type that was leading its own life and wished it weren't. The final conviction of the worthlessness of his work was hardly calculated to improve the young man's state of mind. He was, indeed, profoundly discouraged and concerned. For ten weeks now he had been struggling to isolate a point of view which would at once "carry" all his newer observations on his Subject, and command the support of his unqualified conviction. And to-night he seemed further away from his goal than he had been the day he finished "Bondwomen." However, what brought Charles's humor to a sudden head this evening, what precipitated the fury in which Donald Manford found him--Donald, entering so happy and fine in the evening regalia which the match-making Mary seemed to clap on him every night nowadays--by chance had not to do with his own book at all, but with another's. In short, the young author, very injudiciously in view of his resolve to think of Egoettes no more, had been dipping into "Marna." This book of Angela's had long lain as a plague on the mind of Charles. For a space, he had not returned the book because of the estrangement, or misunderstanding; for another space, because of the swiftly ripening intimacy, compelling the general policy of lying low; and now a large fresh obstacle had risen, in the girl's unfortunate remarks directly connecting the return of her book with a call. Whether, after that, he could harden his heart to slip "Marna" back to her by the hand of the Judge--without any appreciative blossoms, needless to say--remained to be seen. So long as the situation remained as it was, Charles had decided simply not to take up the worry at all.