mere matter of choice and labour and--determination. When this"--he
raised his calm eyes to the figure--"came to me--in the clay--I saw it
as plainly as I see it now. I couldn't forget, or, if I did, I began
again. Sometimes, I confess, I got weird results as I worked; once,
after three days of toil, a--a devil was evolved. It wasn't bad, either,
I almost decided to--to keep it; but soon again I caught a glimpse of
the vision, always lurking close. So I pinched and smoothed off and
added to, and, in the end, the vision stayed. It was in the
clay--everything is, with me. If I cannot see it there, I might as well
give up."

"Thornton, that's why you never lost courage!" Truedale exclaimed.

"Yes, that's the reason, old man."

Lynda came close. "Thank you," she said with deep feeling in her voice,
"I do understand; I thought I would if you explained, and--I think your
method is--Godlike!"

Thornton flushed and laughed. "Hardly that," he returned, "it's merely
my way and I have to take it."

It was late summer when Truedale completed the play. Lynda and the
children were away; the city was hot and comparatively empty. It was a
time when no manager wanted to look at manuscripts, but if one was
forced upon him, he would have more leisure to examine it than he would
have later on.

Taking advantage of this, Truedale--anxious but strangely
insistent--fought his way past the men hired to defeat such a course,
and got into the presence of a manager whose opinion he could trust.

After much argument--and the heat was terrific--the great man promised,
in order to rid himself of Truedale's presence, to read the stuff. He
hadn't the slightest intention of doing so, and meant to start it on its
downward way back to the author as soon as the proper person--in short
his private secretary--came home from his vacation.

But that evening an actress who was fine enough and charmingly
temperamental enough to compel attention, bore down through the heat
upon the manager, with the appalling declaration that she was tired to
death of the part selected for her in her play, and would have none of
it!

"But good Lord!" cried the manager, fanning himself with his
panama--they were at a roof garden restaurant--"this is August--and you
go on in October."

"Not as a depraved and sensual woman, Mr. Camden; I want to be for once
in my life a character that women can remember without blushing."

"But, my poor child, that's your splendid art