days, which were always an
oppression to his mind, began to be frequent, and would soon succeed
each other remorselessly. Well, if only each of them represented four
written slips.

Milvain's advice to him had of course proved useless. The sensational
title suggested nothing, or only ragged shapes of incomplete humanity
that fluttered mockingly when he strove to fix them. But he had decided
upon a story of the kind natural to him; a 'thin' story, and one which
it would be difficult to spin into three volumes. His own, at all
events. The title was always a matter for head-racking when the book was
finished; he had never yet chosen it before beginning.

For a week he got on at the desired rate; then came once more the crisis
he had anticipated.

A familiar symptom of the malady which falls upon outwearied
imagination. There were floating in his mind five or six possible
subjects for a book, all dating back to the time when he first began
novel-writing, when ideas came freshly to him. If he grasped desperately
at one of these, and did his best to develop it, for a day or two he
could almost content himself; characters, situations, lines of motive,
were laboriously schemed, and he felt ready to begin writing. But
scarcely had he done a chapter or two when all the structure fell into
flatness. He had made a mistake. Not this story, but that other one, was
what he should have taken. The other one in question, left out of mind
for a time, had come back with a face of new possibility; it invited
him, tempted him to throw aside what he had already written. Good;
now he was in more hopeful train. But a few days, and the experience
repeated itself. No, not this story, but that third one, of which he
had not thought for a long time. How could he have rejected so hopeful a
subject?

For months he had been living in this way; endless circling, perpetual
beginning, followed by frustration. A sign of exhaustion, it of course
made exhaustion more complete. At times he was on the border-land of
imbecility; his mind looked into a cloudy chaos, a shapeless whirl of
nothings. He talked aloud to himself, not knowing that he did so. Little
phrases which indicated dolorously the subject of his preoccupation
often escaped him in the street: 'What could I make of that, now?'
'Well, suppose I made him--?' 'But no, that wouldn't do,' and so on.
It had happened that he caught the eye of some one passing fixed in
surprise upon him; so young a m