s glad to sit quietly by the big fireplace. With eyes half-closed,
she listened to the opening sentences. But as he proceeded, her
listlessness vanished. And when he laid down the manuscript she was
leaning forward, her slim hands clasped tensely on her knees, her eyes
wide with interest.

"Oh, oh," she told him, "how do you know it all--how can you make them
live and breathe--like that?"

For a moment he did not answer, then he said, "I don't know how I do it.
No artist knows how he creates. It is like Life and Death--and other
miracles. If I could keep to this pace, I'd have a masterpiece. But I
shan't keep to it."

"Why not?"

"I never do."

"But this time--with such a beginning."

"Will you be my critic, Mistress Anne? Let me read to you now and
then--like this?"

"I am afraid I should spoil you with praise. It all seems so--wonderful."

"You can't spoil me, and I like to be wonderful."

In spite of his egotism, she found herself modifying her first
unfavorable estimate of him. His quick eager speech, his mobile mouth,
his mop of dark hair, his white restless hands, his long-lashed
near-sighted eyes, these contributed a personality which had in it
nothing commonplace or conventional.

For three nights he read to her. On the fourth he had nothing to read.
"It is the same old story," he burst out passionately. "I see mountain
peaks, then, suddenly, darkness falls and my brain is blank."

"Wait a little," she told him; "it will come back."

"But it never comes back. All of my good beginnings flat out toward the
end. And that's why I'm pot-boiling, because," bitterly, "I am not big
enough for anything else."

"You mustn't say such things. We achieve only as we believe in ourselves.
Don't you know that? If you believe that things are going to end badly,
they will end badly."

"Oh, wise little school-teacher, how do you know?"

"It is what I teach my children. That they must believe in themselves."

"What else do you teach them?"

"That they must believe in God and love their country, and then nothing
can happen to them that they cannot bear. It is only when one loses faith
and hope that life doesn't seem worth while."

"And do you believe all that you teach?"

Silence. She was gazing into the fire thoughtfully. "I believe it, but I
don't always live up to it. That's the hard part, acting up the things
that we believe. I tell my children that, and I tell them, too, that they
must always keep on tr