But I have always thought her death helped Derrick in a way that her life might have failed to do.

For although he never, I fancy, quite recovered from the blow, and to this day cannot speak of her without tears in his eyes, yet when he came back to Oxford he seemed to have found the answer to the riddle, and though older, sadder and graver than before, had quite lost the restless dissatisfaction that for some time had clouded his life.

In a few months, moreover, I noticed a fresh sign that he was out of the wood.

Coming into his rooms one day I found him sitting in the cushioned window-seat, reading over and correcting some sheets of blue foolscap.
"At it again ?" I asked.
He nodded.
"I mean to finish the first volume here.

For the rest I must be in London." "Why ?" I asked, a little curious as to this unknown art of novel-making.
"Because," he replied, "one must be in the heart of things to understand how Lynwood was affected by them." "Lynwood! I believe you are always thinking of him!" (Lynwood was the hero of his novel.) "Well, so I am nearly--so I must be, if the book is to be any good." "Read me what you have written," I said, throwing myself back in a rickety but tolerably comfortable arm-chair which Derrick had inherited with the rooms.
He hesitated a moment, being always very diffident about his own work; but presently, having provided me with a cigar and made a good deal of unnecessary work in arranging the sheets of the manuscript, he began to read aloud, rather nervously, the opening chapters of the book now so well known under the title of 'Lynwood's Heritage.' I had heard nothing of his for the last four years, and was amazed at the gigantic stride he had made in the interval.