your first duty, as a writer for it, to get yourself read. If you fail
to get yourself read, you are worse than useless to the _Post_. Well,
you have completely failed to do this, and that is why the _Post_ is
discharging you. Come, free yourself from exaggerated notions about your
own importance and look at this simple point with the calm detachment of
a scientist. The _Post_ can save money, while preserving just the same
effect, by discharging you and printing every morning a half-column from
the Encyclopedia Britannica."

She rose quickly, as though her time was very precious, and passed over
to the table, where a great bowl of violets stood. The room was pretty:
it had reminded Queed, when he entered it, of Nicolovius's room, though
there was a softer note in it, as the flowers, the work-bag on the
table, the balled-up veil and gloves on the mantel-shelf. He had liked,
too, the soft-shaded lamps; the vague resolve had come to him to install
a lamp in the Scriptorium later on. But now, thinking of nothing like
this, he sat in a thick silence gazing at her with unwinking sternness.

Sharlee carefully gathered the violets from the bowl, shook a small
shower of water from their stems, dried them with a pocket handkerchief
about the size of a silver dollar. Next she wrapped the stems with
purple tinfoil, tied them with a silken cord and tassel and laid the
gorgeous bunch upon a magazine back, to await her further pleasure.
Then, coming back, she resumed her seat facing the shabby young man she
was assisting to see himself as others saw him.

"I might," she said, "simply stop there. I might tell you that you are a
failure as an editorial writer because you have nothing at all to say
that is of the smallest interest to the great majority of the readers of
editorials, and would not know how to say it if you had. That would be
enough to satisfy most men, but I see that I must make things very plain
and definite for you. Mr. Queed, you are a failure as an editorial
writer because you are first a failure in a much more important
direction. You're a failure as a human being--as a man."

She was watching his face lightly, but closely, and so she was on her
feet as soon as he, and had her hand out before he had even thought of
making this gesture.

"It is useless for this harangue to continue," he said, with a brow of
storm. "Your conception of helpful advice ..."

But Sharlee's voice, which had begun as soon as his, drowned