He smiled to think how little, at first, he had felt the vanity of it all.  He had found a savour even in the grosser evidences of popularity:  the advertisements of his book, the daily shower of “clippings,” the sense that, when he entered a restaurant or a theatre, people nudged each other and said “That’s Betton.”  Yes, the publicity had been sweet to him—­at first.  He had been touched by the sympathy of his fellow-men:  had thought indulgently of the world, as a better place than the failures and the dyspeptics would acknowledge.  And then his success began to submerge him:  he gasped under the thickening shower of letters.  His admirers were really unappeasable.  And they wanted him to do such preposterous things—­to give lectures, to head movements, to be tendered receptions, to speak at banquets, to address mothers, to plead for orphans, to go up in balloons, to lead the struggle for sterilized milk.  They wanted his photograph for literary supplements, his autograph for charity bazaars, his name on committees, literary, educational, and social; above all, they wanted his opinion on everything:  on Christianity, Buddhism, tight lacing, the drug-habit, democratic government, female suffrage and love.  Perhaps the chief benefit of this demand was his incidentally learning from it how few opinions he really had:  the only one that remained with him was a rooted horror of all forms of correspondence.  He had been unutterably thankful when the letters began to fall off.

“Diadems and Faggots” was now two years old, and the moment was at hand when its author might have counted on regaining the blessed shelter of oblivion—­if only he had not written another book!  For it was the worst part of his plight that his first success had goaded him to the perpetration of this particular folly—­that one of the incentives (hideous thought!) to his new work had been the desire to extend and perpetuate his popularity.  And this very week the book was to come out, and the letters, the cursed letters, would begin again!

Wistfully, almost plaintively, he contemplated the breakfast-tray with which Strett presently appeared.  It bore only two notes and the morning journals, but he knew that within the week it would groan under its epistolary burden.  The very newspapers flung the fact at him as he opened them.

READY ON MONDAY.

GEOFFREY BETTON’S NEW NOVEL

ABUNDANCE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “DIADEMS AND FAGGOTS.”

FIRST EDITION OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND ALREADY SOLD OUT.

ORDER NOW.

A hundred and fifty thousand volumes!  And an average of three readers to each!  Half a million of people would be reading him within a week, and every one of them would write to him, and their friends and relations would write too.  He laid down the paper with a shudder.

The two notes looked harmless enough, and the calligraphy of one was vaguely familiar.  He opened the envelope and looked at the signature:  Duncan Vyse.  He had not seen the name in years—­what on earth could Duncan Vyse have to say?  He ran over the page and dropped it with a wondering exclamation, which the watchful Strett, re-entering, met by a tentative “Yes, sir?”