he beginning."

Her eyes left his face; went first to the clock; glanced around the
room. Sharlee's dress was blue, and her neck was as white as a wave's
foamy tooth. Her manner was intended to convey to Mr. Queed that he was
the smallest midge on all her crowded horizon. It did not, of course,
have that effect, but it did arrest and pique his attention most
successfully. It was in his mind that Charles Weyland had been of some
assistance to him in first suggesting work on the _Post_; and again
about the roses for Fifi. He was still ready to believe that she might
have some profitable suggestion about his new problem. Was she not that
"public" and that "average reader" which he himself so despised and
detested? Yet he could not imagine where such a little pink and white
chit found the hardihood to take this tone with one of the foremost
scientists of modern times.

"You interest me. I am totally incompetent now; I will be totally
incompetent on May 15th; this because I am all wrong from the beginning.
Pray proceed."

Sharlee, her thoughts recalled, made a slight inclination of her head.
"Forgive my absent-mindedness. First, then, as to why you are a failure
as an editorial writer. You are quite mistaken in supposing that it is a
mere question of style, though right in regarding your style as in
itself a fatal handicap. However, the trouble has its root in your
amusing attitude of superiority to the work. You think of editorial
writing as small hack-work, entirely beneath the dignity of a man who
has had one or two articles accepted by a prehistoric magazine which
nobody reads. In reality, it is one of the greatest and most splendid of
all professions, fit to call out the very best of a really big man. You
chuckle and sneer at Colonel Cowles and think yourself vastly his
superior as an editorial writer, when, in the opinion of everybody else,
he is in every way your superior. I doubt if the _Post_ has a single
reader who would not prefer to read an article by him, on any subject,
to reading an article by you. I doubt if there is a paper in the world
that would not greatly prefer him as an editor to you--"

"You are absurdly mistaken," he interrupted coldly. "I might name
various papers--"

"Yes, the _Political Science Quarterly_ and the _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_." Sharlee smiled tolerantly, and immediately
resumed: "When you sit down at the office to write an article, whom do
you think you are writ