ehending it, and to walk through his
daily life blindly, without any sort of emotion. Worst of all, Dorothy
herself seemed detached and dream-like. He saw that her face was white and
her eyes sad, but it affected him not at all. He had yet to learn that in
this, as in everything else, a price must inevitably be paid, and that the
sudden change of all his loved realities to hazy visions was the terrible
penalty of his craft.

Yet there was compensation, which is also inevitable. To him, the book was
vital, reaching down into the very heart of the world. Fancy took his
work, and, to the eyes of its creator, made it passing fair. At times he
would sit for an hour or more, nibbling at the end of his pencil, only
negatively conscious, like one who stares fixedly at a blank wall.
Presently, Elaine and her company would come back again, and he would go
on with them, writing down only what he saw and felt.

Chapter after chapter was written and tossed feverishly aside. The words
beat in his pulses like music, each one with its own particular
significance. In return for his personal effacement came moments of
supremest joy, when his whole world was aflame with light, and colour, and
sound, and his physical body fairly shook with ecstasy.

Little did he know that the Cup was in his hands, and that he was draining
it to the very dregs of bitterness. For this temporary intoxication, he
must pay in every hour of his life to come. Henceforward he was set apart
from his fellows, painfully isolated, eternally alone. He should have
friends, but only for the hour. The stranger in the street should be the
same to him as one he had known for many years, and he should be equally
ready, at any moment, to cast either aside. With a quick, merciless
insight, like the knife of a surgeon used without an anaesthetic, he should
explore the inmost recesses of every personality with which he came in
contact, involuntarily, and find himself interested only as some new trait
or capacity was revealed. Calm and emotionless, urged by some hidden
power, he should try each individual to see of what he was made; observing
the man under all possible circumstances, and at times enmeshing new
circumstances about him. He should sacrifice himself continually if by so
doing he could find the deep roots of the other man's selfishness, and,
conversely, be utterly selfish if necessary to discover the other's power
of self-sacrifice.

Unknowingly, he had ceased to