The point, and perhaps the only point I can make in extenuation of my admitted failure to conduct my married life to a successful issue, I have made already; for one year I did, according to my poor lights, strive consistently and hard for success. Throughout another year I did strive as hardly, and almost equally consistently to make our joint life tolerable for us both. More than that I cannot claim, and, in the light of all that happened, I feel that this much is rather pitifully little. X It may very well be that during the first years after my marriage some of the chickens I had hatched out in the preceding years of slum life and incessant scribbling came home to roost. In the case of my reckless sins against hygiene and my digestion, I know they did. But also, I fancy, as touching work, and its monetary reward; for my earnings increased somewhat, while my work suffered deterioration, both in quality and quantity. If it had not chanced to reach me in the black fit which preceded one of my make-believe new honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore his name. This letter--written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle perfume about it--requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon with the great Sylvanus; the place his favourite club--the Court, in Piccadilly. He received me with beautiful urbanity, if a thought languidly. It was clearly a point of honour with him to refer to nothing so prosaic as any kind of work until he had plied me with the best which his luxurious club had to offer; and I gladly record that our luncheon was by far the most ambitious meal I had ever made, or even dreamed of, up to that day. And then, over the delicate Havannahs and fragrant coffee and liqueurs--the enterprise of youth was still mine in these matters, and in those days I accepted any such delicacies as the gods sent my way with never a thought of question, or of consequence--I was informed, with truly regal complaisance, that a certain bundle of manuscript short stories of mine (which by this time had been the round of quite a number of publishers' readers without making any perceptible progress towards germination and print) had been chosen for the honour of inclusion in the new _Fin de siecle_ Library of Fiction, which, as all the world knows--or knew, at all events, during that season--represented the last word, both in literary excellence and artistic publishing.