But the check never came. It was always a long envelope addressed in his own handwriting and containing his “copy” and the diabolically polite regrets of the editor. Poor old Chaytor! Minnie carefully cleaned and oiled her typewriter and put an advertisement in a literary paper for copying work--quoting a penny a thousand less than the other advertisers. The quick clinkety-clank of the typewriter tortured Chaytor; he hated machinery. He said mournfully that the world was rapidly becoming machine-made. Of course Minnie asked acidly, “where would he be if it were not for machines?” Sometimes he got ten shillings, once a guinea, for an article, but it was the copying work that kept them. I remember the day when he got the guinea. He went out and spent two shillings on a plant in a pot for Minnie. You should have seen the look on her face when he presented it! I happened to be there. She went on clanking furiously, just spitting out through the din of her keys: “The baker came while you were out. I had to shut the oak and keep as still as a mouse. We owe _him_ ten shillings. I don’t know where you think it is coming from.” I suppose she was right, but one couldn’t help being sorry for Chaytor. He wasn’t really fit for this work-a-day world. I often had a queer feeling that he did not mean to stop in it long. One morning in early April he burst out laughing. He was sitting at a table near the window polishing up one of his articles, and Minnie was typing at another table in the middle of the room. “What is the matter?” she asked sharply. He looked at her across the machine in a dazed way. “Oh, nothing!” he muttered, confused by her clear, business-like glance. “I was only wondering why I am here--that’s all. It seemed odd.” “I wish you were not here,” she returned practically. “Go and hunt round for a berth! There must be plenty. Why, if you began at £80 it would be better than nothing.” Then she got up, saying it was time to get something for dinner. She came in with her hat and cape on to ask what he would like. The shabbiness of that hat and cape struck his heart, although he had not quite got rid of the dazed, unreal feeling which had come over him so suddenly. He noticed too, that Minnie’s cheeks, so pink once, had deepened to mottled purple, that her shallow eyes were hard and her cheek-bones sharp. He worried himself by wondering where her old self had gone. The girl he had courted under City gas lamps had left him and put a shrewish woman in her place. But she must have gone somewhere, that delicately tinted, coquettish girl. What became of cast-off selves? “Well?” she said crisply, investigating the contents of her purse. “Chops?” “At thirteen pence a pound! No, thank you. A bit of beefsteak and a spring cabbage. I shan’t be long. I shall just run down Red Lion Street.”