In a day or two the strangeness wore off. London is in a Londoner’s blood. No matter how long his exile, life there comes to him as naturally as swimming does to a swimmer after years of non-practice. He remembered how he had yearned for its sights and sounds and stimulating movement. Now they were his again, and he took a measure of content. His first care was to provide himself with some clothes; his next, to visit the publishers. A cordial reception gratified him. The book was bound to have some success. The manuscript was in the printer’s hands. Publication was announced for the spring. Joyce went home lighter-hearted after the interview. It was delightful to be treated as an intellectual man once more. His prospects too were not so very gloomy. With the little capital he had brought back from South Africa and the £80 for his book, he saw himself saved from starvation for two years, if he lived very, very humbly on a little over a pound a week. Meanwhile he could earn something by occasional odds and ends of writing, and also complete his second novel. He arranged his scheme of life as he walked along. He would leave his lodging punctually at a certain hour after breakfast, walk to the British Museum, write all day in the Reading Room, dine, walk home, and write or read in the evenings until it was time for bed. Thus, as ever, his sensitive nature reflected the little ray of hope. But, as usual, it was soon eclipsed by the darkening shadow in his soul, although he set to work with dogged determination. The prospect of life-long solitude appalled him. It was the terrible part of his never-ending punishment. To a nature like his, companionship and sympathy are essentials of development. Without them it withers like a parched plant And yet he dreaded making new acquaintances, on account of the shame that would inevitably follow if his identity and history leaked out He accepted loneliness as his portion. There were only two people in England whom, knowing his story, he could trust to shake him by the hand--Yvonne and the actor McKay. The latter was necessarily lost in the obscurities of his roving profession. Yvonne was married to his cousin, moving in the sphere to which beyond all others he was rigorously denied access. One day, however, when the memory of her sweet kind face came back to him, and he yearned for its bright sympathy, he wrote to her at Fulminster.