hich he gave me five hundred pounds, as the product of his own
work, would be the happiest day that he had ever known. My own, own
Geoff!

"I wonder if he will win it? Oh, if he only would! But supposing that he
does not win it, it would be just as well that--that someone else should
win it--someone in--in his own home. Oh, what a wicked wretch I am!
What's that? It's baby! I do hope she won't wake up. There's all this
mending, and I've only milk enough for one more bottle. There! She is
waking up! You naughty, naughty, _darling_ child!"

[Illustration: "UPSTAIRS THE WIFE SAT WITH THE CHILDREN."]

The next day Geoffrey Ford began his story. He began to pour it out upon
the paper, white-hot from the furnace of his brain. Seldom had he seen
his way so clearly. It had come, as he said, in an instant. It possessed
him, as it were, body and soul and mind, as his work was wont to possess
him when, as he thought, he saw his way. His ideas would come to him
with the force of a mighty rushing river. He could not dam them back. He
felt that he was obliged to give them instant utterance or they would
overflow the banks, and so be lost. He worked best, or he thought that
he worked best, at high pressure. He believed in striking the iron when
the force of the fire had almost made it liquid. Not for him was the
journeyman labour of hammering out tediously, and with infinite care,
cold iron.

The story was to be called "The Beggar." He had even got the title! It
was one of those half-psychological, half-transcendental stories, in the
turnings and twistings of which he liked to give his fancy scope. His
fault was not too little imagination, but too much. The task of keeping
it within due bounds was not only a task which he hated, but possibly it
was a task which was beyond his strength. There are impressionists in
painting. He was an impressionist in literature. He was fond of large
effects--effects which were dashed in by a single movement of the brush.
To descend to details was, he thought, a descent indeed. He was
conscious that there was a public which would read a volume which, from
first to last, only dealt with the minutest particularity, with a couple
of days in the life of a single individual. That was a public he
despised. He preferred to deal with a whole life in the course of a
couple of pages.

He was, in short, a genius. And when I say a genius, I mean, in this
connection, a wholly unmanageable person. As you read hi