from the great Benson, Adams took up a letter
lying loose among the papers on his big littered desk.

"Half the tragedy in New York is contained in a letter like this," he
observed. "Do you know, by the way, that the mass of outside literary
workers drawn in at last by the whirlpool constitutes almost a
population? Take this girl, now, she is so consumed by her ambition, for
heaven knows what, that she comes here and starves in an attic rather
than keep away in comfort. That reminds me," he added, with a sudden
recollection, "she's from your part of the country."

"Indeed!" An intuition shot like a conviction into Trent's mind. "Could
her name, I wonder, by any chance be Coles?"

"You know her then?"

"I've met her, but do you mean to say that ability is what she hasn't
got?"

"For some things I've no doubt she has an amazing amount, only she's
mistaken its probable natural bent. She strikes me as a woman who was
born for the domestic hearth, or failing that she'd do admirably, I dare
say, in a hospital."

"It's the literary instinct, then, that's missing in her?"

"Not the instinct so much as the literary stuff, and in that she's not
different from a million others. She is evidently on fire with the
impulse to create, but the power--the creative matter--isn't in her. Let
her keep up, and she'll probably go on doing 'hack' work until her
death."

"But she's so pretty," urged Trent with a chivalric qualm--and he
remembered her smooth brown hair parted over her rosy ears, her blue
eyes, fresh as flowers, and the peculiar steadfastness that possessed
her face.

"The more's the pity," said Adams, while the muscles about his mouth
twitched slightly, as they always did when he was deeply moved, "it's a
bigger waste. I wrote to her as a father might have done and begged her
to give it up," he went on, "and in return," he tapped the open sheet,
"she sends me this fierce, pathetic little letter and informs me grandly
that her life is dedicated. Dedicated, good Lord!" he exclaimed
compassionately, "dedicated to syndicated stories in the Sunday press
and an occasional verse in the cheaper magazines."

"And there's absolutely nothing to be done?" asked Trent.

Adams met the question with a frown.

"Oh, if it would make it all come right in the end, I'd go on publishing
her empty, trite little articles until Gabriel blows his trumpet."

"It wouldn't help, though, after all."

"Well, hardly--the quick way is sure t