ay week by week,
quarter by quarter, as mine has for the last nine or ten years, there is
not enough dammed back behind the mill at any given period to supply
the force a complete book on any subject requires. Then there is the
self-confidence and waiting power. Where quick results have grown
customary, they are fatal to a lively faith in the future.'

'Yes, I comprehend; and so you choose to write in fragments?'

'No, I don't choose to do it in the sense you mean; choosing from a
whole world of professions, all possible. It was by the constraint of
accident merely. Not that I object to the accident.'

'Why don't you object--I mean, why do you feel so quiet about things?'
Elfride was half afraid to question him so, but her intense curiosity to
see what the inside of literary Mr. Knight was like, kept her going on.

Knight certainly did not mind being frank with her. Instances of this
trait in men who are not without feeling, but are reticent from habit,
may be recalled by all of us. When they find a listener who can by no
possibility make use of them, rival them, or condemn them, reserved and
even suspicious men of the world become frank, keenly enjoying the inner
side of their frankness.

'Why I don't mind the accidental constraint,' he replied, 'is because,
in making beginnings, a chance limitation of direction is often better
than absolute freedom.'

'I see--that is, I should if I quite understood what all those
generalities mean.'

'Why, this: That an arbitrary foundation for one's work, which no length
of thought can alter, leaves the attention free to fix itself on the
work itself, and make the best of it.'

'Lateral compression forcing altitude, as would be said in that tongue,'
she said mischievously. 'And I suppose where no limit exists, as in the
case of a rich man with a wide taste who wants to do something, it will
be better to choose a limit capriciously than to have none.'

'Yes,' he said meditatively. 'I can go as far as that.'

'Well,' resumed Elfride, 'I think it better for a man's nature if he
does nothing in particular.'

'There is such a case as being obliged to.'

'Yes, yes; I was speaking of when you are not obliged for any other
reason than delight in the prospect of fame. I have thought many times
lately that a thin widespread happiness, commencing now, and of a piece
with the days of your life, is preferable to an anticipated heap far
away in the future, and none now.'

'Why, tha