His conscience was not dull, however, and there were hours when Kent suffered scarcely less acutely than one realises that a wife may sometimes suffer in similar circumstances. His remorse then was just what he had known it would be. From making his projected visit to Monmouth he had excused himself--it was repugnant enough to play the hypocrite in his letters--and by degrees Cynthia ceased to refer to his coming; but while her silence on the point relieved him from the necessity for telling her further falsehoods, it intensified his shame. His abasement was completed by the seventh rejection of _The Eye of the Beholder_. He sent it off again at once, to Messrs. Kynaston, to get it out of his sight; but the return of the ill-starred package had revived all the passion of his disappointment concerning it, and he could not get rid of the burning at his heart so easily as he did of the parcel. The weight of the slighted manuscript lay on his spirit for days after Thurgate and Tatham's refusal. The irony of it, that Mrs. Deane-Pitt could place his hasty work in the best papers, was enabled to pay him two hundred pounds for writing a novel of which he was ashamed, while his own book, to which he had devoted a year, was scorned on all sides! True, he had had, in his own name, very much better, reviews than those that had been accorded so far to the novel written for her. But ... what a profession? Once he owned to her something of what he was feeling. He couldn't help himself--he wanted her to comfort him. "_The Eye of the Beholder_ has come back again," he groaned. "Really?" she said. "How many is that?" "God knows! It's awfully hard that _you_ can place whatever I do, Eva, and _I_ get my best stuff kicked back to me from every publisher's office in London. I'm miserable!" She smiled. She did not mean to be unsympathetic, but Kent hated her for it furiously as she turned her face. "There's much in a name," she said with a shrug. "What's the difference, though? Your terms aren't bad, 'miserable one,' whether the name is mine or yours. By the way, I can work another tale for _The Metropolis_, if you'll knock it off for me; I was going to write to you." Kent never appealed to her for pity again. But a little later there came a letter from Cynthia, replying to his brief announcement of Thurgate and Tatham's rejection. Her consolation and prophesies of "success yet" overflowed four sheets, and the man's throat was tight as he read them. Well, he must do the tale for _The Metropolis_! But he would write some short stories for himself as well, he determined. It had not been a lucrative occupation when he essayed it before, but those early stories had been the wrong kind of thing--he perceived it now: he would write some short stories of the pattern that was so successful when it was signed "Eva Deane-Pitt."