n search of arguments in
favour of Ingram.

There was a long interval during which both smoked in silence.

"Do you remember," asked Morgan, at length, "the circumstances under
which we first became acquainted?"

"Perfectly," responded Ingram. "You wrote me a long letter, a rather
pathetic one. That was the first intimation I had of your existence."

"Did you destroy that letter?"

"I never destroy letters--compromising ones, of course, always
excepted."

"Then I may assume it still exists. Would it give you very much
trouble to find it now?"

"I pride myself upon my system," answered Ingram.

"Please put it to the test, then."

"Your system is excellent," admitted Morgan, as at the end of about
five minutes Ingram held up the sheets in triumph. "Now I wonder if
you'd read it to me. I want to hear how it sounds."

"Certainly, you amusing beggar," said Ingram. "You wrote it during
your last crisis and you want to compare your feelings then with now."

"I forget what I wrote," said Morgan, with an attempt at gaiety. "It
must be very dramatic, so please put the proper expression into it,
just as if it were a passage in one of your plays."

"Dear Mr. Ingram," read out that gentleman. "For nearly six years I
have been trying to live by writing verse--ever since I was seventeen.
Six years of passionate hope and longing, failure and failure, all
years of wandering in the desert, of groping in the dark. I know no
one--no one to criticise me--no one to encourage, to blame, or to
praise; only the voice of purpose in my breast. Amid loneliness this
passion for fruitless labour has grown strong, frenzied, blind.
Perhaps one day I shall penetrate--if I live. But for life one must
have food; for work one must have shelter. At twenty-three one does
not want to die; not when one has lived always in the future, when one
has striven and toiled for recognition that may yet come. Not mere
recognition of genius or talent, of knack or gift, but recognition of
Truth as opposed to Imposture, of my right to life, of my right to
give free and full expression of the individuality that is mine.

"As matters are now--I am utterly friendless so far as my inner life
is concerned--I can see no other end than fall. God knows what shape
that fall is destined to take; into what mire my soul must plunge in
the fight for life. I could bear anything if I were not so utterly
alone and helpless. I would do hack-work if I but knew Grub Street.