In ten minutes she appeared. There was apprehension on her face; she feared he was going to lament his inability to work. Instead of that, he told her joyfully that the first volume was finished.
‘Thank goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘Are you going to do any more to-night?’
‘I think not—if you will come and sit with me.’
‘Willie doesn’t seem very well. He can’t get to sleep.’
‘You would like to stay with him?’
‘A little while. I’ll come presently.’
She closed the door. Reardon brought a high-backed chair to the fireside, and allowed himself to forget the two volumes that had still to be struggled through, in a grateful sense of the portion that was achieved. In a few minutes it occurred to him that it would be delightful to read a scrap of the ‘Odyssey’; he went to the shelves on which were his classical books, took the desired volume, and opened it where Odysseus speaks to Nausicaa:
‘For never yet did I behold one of mortals like to thee, neither man nor woman; I am awed as I look upon thee. In Delos once, hard by the altar of Apollo, I saw a young palm-tree shooting up with even such a grace.’
Yes, yes; THAT was not written at so many pages a day, with a workhouse clock clanging its admonition at the poet’s ear. How it freshened the soul! How the eyes grew dim with a rare joy in the sounding of those nobly sweet hexameters!
Amy came into the room again.