y briskly as if I thought I was going, but I
didn't. This time I turned around, went clear into the room and sat down
on the couch.

"And anyway," I said, "you haven't any right to deceive your mother like
that. It is robbing her of a joy that she surely deserves. She has earned
it. You haven't any right not to tell her that your story won the prize.
Whether we let you withdraw it or not, it would be wrong for you to steal
that pleasure from your own mother. You are thinking merely of your own
selfish wishes."

"No, no, no! Don't you see?" She flung herself toward me. "It is like
being a surgeon. I must cut out the ambition. I can never fulfill it.
Never, never, I tell you. The news of this prize will make it grow and
grow like a cancer or something, till it will hurt worse, maim, kill,
when I fail at last. If she would only see that I love mathematics and
can do something in that maybe some day. But in literature. Suppose I
shut myself up for years, struggle, struggle, struggle to wring out
something that isn't in me, while she wears herself out to support me.
The publishers will send it back, one after another. I can't write, I
tell you. I know it. It will be all an awful sacrifice--a useless
sacrifice, with no issue except waste of her life and my life. Don't you
see?"

"Don't you think," said I calmly, "don't you think that you are just a
little foolish and intense?" That is what a professor said to me once and
it had a wonderfully reducing effect. So I tried it on this excited
little freshman. But the result was different. Instead of clearing the
atmosphere with a breeze of half mortified laughter, it created a
stillness like the stillness before a whirlwind. I got up hastily. "I
think I had better be going," I said.

This time I heard the key turn in the lock behind me as I walked rapidly
away. Actually I had to hold myself in to keep from scuttling away like a
whipped puppy. That is how I felt inside. I didn't believe that she would
ever forgive me. There were two compensations for this episode in my
editorial career: one was the realization that the little freshman had
plenty of dignity to fall back on, the other was that she would not be
very likely to ask again for the return of the prize story.

Considering that this was my sincere attitude, you may imagine how amazed
I was to hear my name called by this young person the very next morning.
She came running up to me at the instant my fingers were on the k