,
and had adjusted his own brain to them through many brisk sessions,
fell now through empty space. He had no resources in this room, where
he had been driven so long by the mental force of another. Having
suffered himself to be played upon, like the instrument before him, he
died many deaths from _ennui_.... So Cairns and the secretary stared
helplessly at each other across the emptiness; and New York rushed on,
with its mad business, singing spitefully in their ears: "You for the
poor-farms. You'll lose your front, and your markets. Your income is
suffering; the presses are waiting; editors dependent...."

Cairns left the house on the third morning after Bedient's coming,
having dictated two or three letters.... Bedient was across the street
from the _Smilax Club_ in the little fenced-in park--Gramercy. Cairns
told his work-difficulty.

"Don't you think it would be good for you, David," Bedient asked, "to
let the subconscious catch up?"

Cairns was interested at once. "What do you mean?"

"I've been thinking more than a little about you and New York. One
thing is sure: New York is pretty much wrong, or I'm insane----"

"You're happy about it," Cairns remarked. "Tell me the worst."

"People here use their reflectors and not their generators," Bedient
said. "They shine with another's light, when they should be
incandescent. The brain in your skull, in any man's skull, is but a
reflector, an instrument of his deeper mind. There's your genius,
infinitely wiser than your brain. It's your sun; your brain, the moon.
All great work comes from the subconscious mind. You and New York use
too much moonshine."

Both men were smiling, but to Cairns, nevertheless, it seemed that his
own conscience had awakened after a long sleep. This wanderer from the
seas had twigged the brain brass which he had long been passing for
gold value. He saw many bits of his recent work, as products of
intellectual foppery. He recalled a letter recently received from an
editor; which read: "That last article of yours has caught on. Do six
more like it." He hadn't felt the stab before. He had done the
six--multiplied his original idea by mechanical means....

All things considered, it was rather an important affair--the party
that night at the _Smilax Club_. Cairns began with the idea of asking
ten people, but the more he studied Bedient's effect upon himself, the
more particular he became about the "atmosphere." Just the men he
wanted were ou