s
good, or, as he put it merrily, the same as. He held that his marked
improvement entitled him to the favor of a critical bookstore;
without this, what motive had he in keeping from a reversion to the
errors which had won him the vicious prosperity of his first venture?
Hadn't Erlcort a duty to perform in preventing his going back to the
bad? Refuse this markedly improved fiction, and you drove him to
writing nothing but best-sellers from now on. He urged Erlcort to
reflect.

They had a jolly time, and the ex-best-seller went away in high
spirits, prophesying that Erlcort would come to his fiction yet.

There were authors who did not leave Erlcort so cheerful when they
failed to see their books on his shelves or tables. Some of them were
young authors who had written their worthless books with a devout
faith in their worth, and they went away more in sorrow than in anger,
and yet more in bewilderment. Some were old authors who had been all
their lives acceptably writing second-rate books and trying to make
them unacceptably first-rate. If he knew them he kept out of their
way, but the dejection of their looks was not less a pang to him if he
saw them searching his stock for their books in vain.

He had his own moments of dejection. The interest of the press in his
enterprise had flashed through the Sunday issues of a single week, and
then flashed out in lasting darkness. He wondered vaguely if he had
counted without the counting-house in hoping for their continued
favor; he could not realize that nothing is so stale as old news, and
that no excess of advertising would have relumed those fitful fires.

He would have liked to talk the case over with Margaret Green. After
his first revolt from the easy publicity the reporters had first given
him, he was aware of having enjoyed it--perhaps vulgarly enjoyed it.
But he hoped not quite that; he hoped that in his fleeting celebrity
he had cared for his scheme rather than himself. He had really
believed in it, and he liked having it recognized as a feature of
modern civilization, an innovation which did his city and his country
credit. Now and then an essayist of those who wrote thoughtful
articles in the Sunday or Saturday-evening editions had dropped in,
and he had opened his heart to them in a way he would not have minded
their taking advantage of. Secretly he hoped they would see a topic in
his enterprise and his philosophy of it. But they never did, and he
was left to