He was writing at a desperate pace too, and frowned when I spoke to him.

I took up the sheet of foolscap which he had just finished and glanced at the number of the page--evidently he had written an immense quantity since the previous day.
"You will knock yourself up if you go on at this rate!" I exclaimed.
"Nonsense!" he said sharply.

"You know it never tires me." Yet, all the same, he passed his hand very wearily over his forehead, and stretched himself with the air of one who had been in a cramping position for many hours.
"You have broken your vow!" I cried.

"You have been writing at night." "No," he said; "it was morning when I began--three o'clock.

And it pays better to get up and write than to lie awake thinking." Judging by the speed with which the novel grew in the next few weeks, I could tell that Derrick's nights were of the worst.
He began, too, to look very thin and haggard, and I more than once noticed that curious 'sleep-walking' expression in his eyes; he seemed to me just like a man who has received his death-blow, yet still lingers--half alive, half dead.