good policy to let it be known in a casual way that he was for the moment out of employment. He was in the living room at five when the members, for the most part writers and editors, began to drift in. To the assemblage he made the demise of The Superman seem very humorous indeed. The late editor, the adamantine father, the staff, all appeared ridiculous. The members were greatly amused, and Durand felt sure of an invitation to dinner and perhaps a good offer afterward. Undoubtedly he was an entertaining talker, one of the few really good conversationalists in America. Even in Paris he could, no doubt, hold his own. At least he could make the symposiarchs admit that we were not all barbarians over here-not quite. These thoughts ran through his head as he discoursed.

"Thus, my friends," he said, waving a hand at the grinning circle, "did the old gentleman's obstinacy triumph over my genius. To-morrow the editor enters the woolen business. The blanket of commerce becomes the shroud of art." They laughed. But one by one they drifted out. Alone, at last, he left the club and marched with somewhat faded jauntiness back to his rooms-and Moira. "Ah, mon Dieu!" he said, and twirled his stick abstractedly. They understood him at the club, or at least appreciated him. It is true that to-night they all happened to have engagements; that was mere chance, yet, for a fleet instant he felt that there had been something in his audience at the clubhow should he say it?-not quite satisfying. The moment passed. He straightened his slender, stooped figure and turned down his own street. It was crowded with children playing in the late evening light. All down the block a shrill din rose above the restless mass. Every night they spun about the street thus, aimlessly, almost without pleasure, as if unwilling prisoners in the toils of their own quavering agitation.

Durand paused before the yellowterra-cotta entrance to his home. In

the street a small Italian boy, arrayed in a paper hat, was performing by himself a sort of marching dance. It was rather entertaining, and meant to be so, for the boy glanced often at two men. who lounged against an iron railing. They grinned with tolerant amusement, then turned to talk of weightier matters.

As Durand mounted the long stairs the thought just brushed him that those two men against the railings smiled a little like the ring of faces at the club; it only brushed him, however, and was gone.

The summer passed and no job came. He first made casual inquiries at the club, then direct approaches. There was nothing. His funds were running low and he resigned. It was a pity that he should have to lose that appreciative circle. Now he began to haunt the offices where work of his sort might be found. Beneath his air, still ironic, he had become almost a petitioner. But at home with Moira he was more than ever acid and obscure. Every evening she asked him with dogged timidity what he had been doing that day.

"Slumming, my dear," he always answered, and waved her away. At last she understood that he meant visiting the editors. She did not dare ask more, and when at times he related the best examples of his wit and their obtuseness she was dazed and could only murmur inarticulately. His bon mots fell flat.

"I am constantly amazed," he said, bitingly, "at the extraordinary heights to which dogged imbecility can carry persons-in all walks of life-from publishing to matrimony."

His words were obscure, but she felt his tone. She managed a wavering smile; her eyes were filling.

"You look so tired, Wilton." Indeed, the veins in his meager hands stood out sharper each day. He had noticed it. Each day his worn, foreign-looking coat weighed on him a little more heavily and left him a little more bowed after his fruitless round. It was a circumstance, however, that he did not care to have noticed. But she went on.

"The suit was placed in the hands of Monsieur Levinsky this morning. Here are the proceeds."

"You sold it! Are we as low as that?" "Quite. But there are other resources. That print on the wall there by my friend Wistar. I just learned to-day that Eisenberg, the banker, having taken the Holbeins out of his recently formed collection as being too pro-German, came into the Stuart Galleries last week and bought five of Wistar's etchings, under the mistaken impression that they were Whistler's. The joke is that Wistar's things, though unrecognized, are rather fine. Though on whom the joke is, it is difficult to say. Certainly not on me, for I can now get enough for that print to keep us going for another week.”

She made a movement toward him. "I'm so sorry!"

"You needn't be on my account. My only fear is that its removal may make room for one of your lithographs of the work of Sir Edwin Landseer, knight, which up to now I have managed to keep stored under your bed."

"I won't bring them out. Perhaps you could sell them, too."

"My dear!" He shrugged his shoulders and retired behind his paper.

"After all," he muttered, "why should he have been made only a knight? Why not a baronet? Surely talent such as his must be hereditary. I am confident that he transmitted it to his descendants as easily as the rest of his estate."

"But if he had, they would be artists, too, wouldn't they, Wilton?"

“Not at all. The fact that they do not exercise his talent shows not that they are lesser artists than Sir Edwin, but greater."

He felt her looking at him for an irritating length of time, then heard her go into the kitchenette. The paper was dull. Apparently a group of hired men from Chicago had struck a small ball

more frequently than a corresponding group from New York. "Sox Wallop Mac Moundsmen," it said. Grotesque. It might be an account of a tribal raid on a cliff dweller's village, in the original Choctaw. He returned to the theatrical column. Hello! They were giving a dinner that night to their dramatic critic. Lucky pariah. But why?-"who is leaving to become book editor of McCabe & Son." Leaving, eh? "Moira!" he called. "This week the dramatic critic of the Evening Star leaves them. What more logical than that I should arrive?"

"Wouldn't that be wonderful! You don't suppose they could have got some one else?" "It says

He scanned the article. nothing."

"Be sure to wear your dark-blue tie. It makes you look so distinguished.”

When he came home next day, after his interview with the editor of the Evening Star, of course she was waiting for him. And of course she asked, "Well, what happened?"

"Does anything ever happen at interviews? Nothing. I am put off with vague phrases."

"Then they haven't taken anyone else?"

"Not precisely. For the present their dramatic criticism is in the hands of a young reporter of whom they entertain great hopes in view of the fact that he has failed at everything else. I congratulated the editor at the closeness of his reasoning."

"Oh, but he couldn't have liked that." "On the contrary, he laughed. I added that I was sure that the young incompetent would make good in his sense of the term."

"I hope he understood you were joking."

"He understood, I am sure, that I was not quite the ordinary hack writer seeking a job. As a matter of fact, I got off some rather good things. He was impressed. I say it without conceit. After all, why should not even mediocre

ability impress an editor? At any rate, he promised to let me know in a week." "I hope you made him like you, too," she said, a little dubiously. "You can make anyone like you if you want to." She looked at him wistfully.

"My dear, I do not seek affection, even the affection of editors, warmhearted and responsive though they be. I showed him that plainly. I want recognition. I showed him that, too. And I think you will find that he cannot withhold it from me."

His tired face hardened into a supercilious, defiant stare. He felt as though he were facing down the editors of the world—a gallant figure, soon to be triumphant. Moira said nothing, but her timid look of doubt and alarm was equally irritating.

In spite of his confidence the week was rather trying. Moira got on his nerves, always running down to see if it were the postman. At last he said:

"My dear, you seem to imagine our life is in the hands of a single stout and dull editor. For God's sake keep your perspective." She subsided and after that he himself went down to see if it were the postman.

He was far from well, too. Twice, in fact, he was quite vulgarly ill after climbing the stairs. He managed to conceal it from Moira and her dreaded sympathy. She must have suspected, however, for she looked at him with a sort of patient hunger, ghoulishly waiting for a chance to nurse him, no doubt. It was just the sort of thing she would like. Why couldn't she understand that he didn't care what happened to his body if only she could feel the things that went on in his head? But her very look showed how hopeless it was. He burst out at her. "Will you stop looking at me like a spaniel? For God's sake find something to do! Go for a run in the park. That's a good dog," he added, with a short, stabbing laugh.

Strangely enough, she did not wince. "I am going out in an hour."

Her face was grave, she had a certain dignity. She seemed, so to speak, to have folded her wings about her. He felt that he had been brutal. But, after all, she was hopeless.

The next two days were not so trying. She let him alone, which was something. His outburst, while rather ruthless, had at least cleared the air and made it easier for him. He was even able to do some work on a rather entertaining essay. When he got enough of them he would make a book. They would cause something of a stir, he imagined. In a more expansive moment he read her a passage. That, however, was a mistake; she smiled with rather desperate timidity and he grew angry. His muffled rage in turn made him alarmingly tired, so that he had to stop his work. How different it would have been with a woman who understood!

He must have dozed off, for it was evening and Moira was shyly touching his arm. She had a letter—the letter— his heart checked for a breathless instant. It scurried on; he reached out his hand.

"The messenger of fate, eh?" He managed to look at her quizzically and smile. Curiously enough, after all her agitation of the week, she was not excited. It would have been more appropriate if she had saved her fluttering emotions for the climax. He had opened the letter.

His eyes were swimming dizzily, but through the typewritten blur he knew somehow that he was offered the job.

"They seem to want me in spite of my talents."

Unfortunately, there was a catch in his voice which made her feel justified in patting his hand.

Moira Durand saw little of her husband, now that he had become the dramatic critic of the Evening Star. He was a minor notable and consorted with other minor notables at the club, which he had hastened to rejoin as soon as his better fortunes were assured. His essays

were published in a book and praised by reviewers. She could make almost nothing of them, but felt they must be very clever. He seemed happy-that was the main thing. He had a new coat just like the old, and always wore a boutonnière. Among that galaxy at the club, those brilliant men she had never met, he had, as he said, "arrived." He was full of confidence and superior to everyone in that funny way of his. She no longer tried to follow him or respond when he talked; she knew how ineffectual she was. She simply kept quiet, and worried because he was not well. He was just as alert-more so. But his mind was spinning like a bright, hard machine in his listless, sagging body.

He would not do anything about it. And when she suggested a doctor he grew so angry that it frightened her. It might make him really sick getting so angry as that. It was, of course, childish of him. With all his cleverness, he was childish about such things as that and many others. Yet she felt helpless

to deal with him.

She was too stupid; he slipped from her grasp and snapped at her bungling fingers. It must be maddening to a man like him to have her blundering around. She blushed to herself. There had been one time, however, when she had not been helpless, not bungled; one time when she had done the right thing. Her flushed cheeks curved softly into a gentle, triumphant smile. When at last he grew ill she was glad. He would have to rest now. He lay on the sofa during the day, his thin neck straining out of his flapping bath robe, not very distinguished-looking without his coat of foreign cut. His face, fine-drawn, weary, petulant, now showed only repressed exasperation. She thought it was merely because of his confinement, his constant association with her. She looked forward on his behalf to the day of his release.

Instead of resting, however, he worked continually, harder than ever. All day his curved claw tugged impatiently at his goatee and scratched across the

sheets of paper on his sharp knees. One by one, closely written, the sheets fluttered to the floor; he bit his lip at her when she stooped to gather them. He was bright-eyed, feverish. His preoccupation would brook no interruption. Indeed, its exaggerated intensity seemed to sense the approach of the final interruption which can be neither forestalled nor ignored. He had guessed it first. She realized it with a slow, dull shock, then a pang. Again her stupidity had lagged behind his quick intelligence.

Now at last he must see a doctor.

"But I already have. Yesterday while you were out. There is no use in reduplicating either his advice or his fee; both were rather staggering."

"What did he tell you?"

"Not nearly as much as I told him. I knew my symptoms already, but I wanted him to check them up. He was merely the certified public accountant of a bankrupt concern."

Why did he always talk that way— not seriously, even now?

"What did he say?”

"That my heart is, for all practical purposes, nonexistent. I inferred that the rest of me was to follow."

So it was true. That queer, proud figure was to go. No more obscure, bitter words. No one for her to be a clog upon. For her no more continual groping toward that cruel, fascinating mystery and a blow. No one dumbly, clumsily, senselessly to love.

She felt in her breast a thrust of shame and hopeless agony and hid her face in a fold of his dressing gown.

"Now then, my dear." She felt him patting her, impersonally, impatiently. His fingers, laid on her shoulder were like a lash. Why did she not leave him?

"Now then, my dear, the insurance is quite right."

"What do I care for that? We must get medicine."

"The doctor left some. After pronouncing the ritual that accompanies the pills, he admitted on closer questioning that they were quite useless."

"You have never been to blame. And I have at times been rather a mucker. I see that clearly."

They had come to the end, and all he could give her was justice. Why did she not run away?

"If I could only help you now."

“I don't feel that I need it. I wonder if you can believe that. I am sorry not to have been allowed more time. I think I could show them something. Still, I already have. From the first moment I went down to the Star to see the editor -(I was at my best that day I think I told you that moment was the turning point)—from then on more and more people have seen the sort of person I am. I say it without conceit; such things simply happen.'

“Wilton, it scares me.”

"That comes from your religious training, my dear. I wish you would not feel so. Certainly I do not. Why should I? If there is nothing further it means that I shall be freed from stupidity and bad art. If there is"-his face kindled as it had not since the day he first kissed her-"it means that I shall obtain recognition."

He gazed out of the window, out over the housetops and smoke wreaths, over the broken clangor and steady hum note of the town. She followed his tense, listening look, but there was nothing-only clouds drifting out to sea. With a tug at his goatee he began to write.

That night he slept on the couch. She had tried to move him, but his breath was short.

"Perhaps I had best stay," he had murmured, painfully. He laid a long hand on the cover. "Besides, I rather like this chintz. It will make an effective setting. There, there, I did not mean to hurt you. But it is impossible to be serious about an event so irrational and grotesque."

He dozed in snatches, and betweentimes he wrote. She waited quietly, to

away from him. Toward morning she lay down on her bed, leaving the door open. At dawn she heard a long, soft sigh and ran in to him. The pencil in his hand had made a black jagged line across the

paper.

"Wilton!" she cried, in a high, broken voice. The paper fluttered from his quiet hands. She stooped to pick it up but fell forward and pressed her brow against his feet.

She raised herself up at last and looked at him. Then she busied herself doing for him with dreadful passion all the little things he would never allow. When she was done he rested comfortably, carefully tucked in. She sat beside him to wait for day.

As the light grew upon the long, bluff walls, upon his prints and bronzes and the big chair, molded to his form, she thought of all that he had been and all that she had lacked. One scene at last stood out of her despair. She saw herself winding through a great room of humming, flickering machines up to the offices of the Evening Star. Now she was outside the editor's room. brushing her coat with her hand, hoping that she looked neat and businesslike. Then she was standing before the editor himself, red faced and ruthless.

She was

"My husband-he came to see you— he doesn't know I'm here. I thought you might not have understood him—it sounds dreadful, but he tries to show off to strangers. He really isn't that way at all-he's a wonderful worker-he'll do anything-always does what he says he will he always has his work done on time. You might not think it, but he's the most dependable person in the world. Give him a chance."

The great man looked at her grimly. "Seemed clever but irresponsible-curse of newspaper business."

"He's just like a boy-always play. acting-all boys do-you know that.” The great man grunted.