When "Renunciations" was finished he took the manuscript to Conant and waited a fortnight in an agony of suspense and repressed jubilation for the great man’s verdict. He was all the more anxious to hear it because, every now and then, while writing the story, doubts—distressing, perplexing—had intruded. At times and all of a sudden, after days of the steadiest footing, the surest progress, the story—the whole set and trend of the affair—would seem, as it were, to escape from his control. Where once, in "Bunt McBride," he had gripped, he must now grope. What was it? He had been so sure of himself, with all the stimulus of new surroundings, the work in this second novel should have been all the easier. But the doubt would fade, and for weeks he would plough on, till again, and all unexpectedly, he would find himself in an agony of indecision as to the outcome of some vital pivotal episode of the story. Of two methods of treatment, both equally plausible, he could not say which was the true, which the false; and he must needs take, as it were, a leap in the dark—it was either that or abandoning the story, trusting to mere luck that he would, somehow, be carried through. A fortnight after he had delivered the manuscript to Conant he presented himself in the publisher’s office. "I was just about to send for you," said Conant. "I finished your story last week." There was a pause. Overbeck settled himself comfortably in his chair, but his nails were cutting his palms. "Hastings has read it, too—and—well, frankly, Overbeck, we were disappointed." "Yes?" inquired Overbeck, calmly. "H’m—that’s too b-bad." He could not hear, or at least could not understand, just what the publisher said next. Then, after a time that seemed immeasurably long, he caught the words: "It would not do you a bit of good, my boy, to have us publish it—it would harm you. There are a good many things I would lie about, but books are not included. This ’Renunciations’ of yours is—is, why, confound it, Overbeck, it’s foolishness." Overbeck went out and sat on a bench in a square near by, looking vacantly at a fountain as it rose and fell and rose again with an incessant cadenced splashing. Then he took himself home to his hall bedroom. He had brought the manuscript of his novel with him, and for a long time he sat at his table listlessly turning the leaves, confused, stupid, all but inert. The end, however, did not come suddenly. A few weeks later "Renunciations" was published, but not by Conant. It bore the imprint of an obscure firm in Boston. The covers were of limp dressed leather, olive green, and could be tied together by thongs, like a portfolio. The sale stopped after five hundred copies had been ordered, and the real critics, those who did not belong to New Bohemia, hardly so much as noticed the book.