“It’s Maupassant hash,” said Mrs. Dawe. “It may not be art, but I do wish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an Ella Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I’m hungry.”

As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked Editor Westbrook’s sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor had seen Dawe in several months.

“Why, Shack, is this you?” said Westbrook somewhat awkwardly, for the form of this phrase seemed to touch upon the other’s changed appearance.

“Sit down for a minute,” said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. “This is my office. I can’t come to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down—you won’t be disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will take you for a swell porch-climber. They won’t know you are only an editor.”

“Smoke, Shack?” said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon the virulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield.

Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl pecks at a chocolate cream.

“I have just—” began the editor.

“Oh, I know; don’t finish,” said Dawe. “Give me a match. You have just ten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office-boy and invade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog that couldn’t read the ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs.”

“How goes the writing?” asked the editor.

“Look at me,” said Dawe, “for your answer. Now don’t put on that embarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don’t get a job as a wine agent or a cab-driver. I’m in the fight to a finish. I know I can write good fiction and I’ll force you fellows to admit it yet. I’ll make you change the spelling of ‘regrets’ to ‘c-h-e-q-u-e’ before I’m done with you.”

Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, sceptical expression—the copyrighted expression of the editor beleaguered by the unavailable contributor.

“Have you read the last story I sent you—‘The Alarum of the Soul’?” asked Dawe.

“Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It had some good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when it goes back to you. I regret—”

“Never mind the regrets,” said Dawe grimly. “There’s neither salve nor sting in ’em any more. What I want to know is why. Come, now; out with the good points first.”

“The story,” said Westbrook deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, “is written around an almost original plot. Characterization—the best you have done. Construction—almost as good, except for a few weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes, and touches. It was a good story, except—”

“I can write English, can’t I?” interrupted Dawe.

“I have always told you,” said the editor, “that you had a style.”

“Then the trouble is the—”

“Same old thing,” said Editor Westbrook. “You work up to your climax like an artist. And then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don’t know what form of obstinate madness possesses you, Shack, but that is what you do with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparison with the photographer. Now and then photography, in spite of its impossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse