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INVITA MINERVA.
After all, there came a day when Edwin Reardon found himself regularly at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum of manuscript each four-and-twenty hours.

He wrote a very small hand; sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent--thanks to the astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank pages--a passable three-hundred-page volume.
On an average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days for the volume, and forty-five for the completed book.
Forty-five days; an eternity in the looking forward.

Yet the calculation gave him a faint-hearted encouragement.

At that rate he might have his book sold by Christmas.