nancial aid to purchase the Peninsula of
Lower California for the purpose of communist colonization. There were
letters from women seeking to know him, and over one such he smiled, for
enclosed was her receipt for pew-rent, sent as evidence of her good faith
and as proof of her respectability.

Editors and publishers contributed to the daily heap of letters, the
former on their knees for his manuscripts, the latter on their knees for
his books--his poor disdained manuscripts that had kept all he possessed
in pawn for so many dreary months in order to find them in postage. There
were unexpected checks for English serial rights and for advance payments
on foreign translations. His English agent announced the sale of German
translation rights in three of his books, and informed him that Swedish
editions, from which he could expect nothing because Sweden was not a
party to the Berne Convention, were already on the market. Then there
was a nominal request for his permission for a Russian translation, that
country being likewise outside the Berne Convention.

He turned to the huge bundle of clippings which had come in from his
press bureau, and read about himself and his vogue, which had become a
furore. All his creative output had been flung to the public in one
magnificent sweep. That seemed to account for it. He had taken the
public off its feet, the way Kipling had, that time when he lay near to
death and all the mob, animated by a mob-mind thought, began suddenly to
read him. Martin remembered how that same world-mob, having read him and
acclaimed him and not understood him in the least, had, abruptly, a few
months later, flung itself upon him and torn him to pieces. Martin
grinned at the thought. Who was he that he should not be similarly
treated in a few more months? Well, he would fool the mob. He would be
away, in the South Seas, building his grass house, trading for pearls and
copra, jumping reefs in frail outriggers, catching sharks and bonitas,
hunting wild goats among the cliffs of the valley that lay next to the
valley of Taiohae.

In the moment of that thought the desperateness of his situation dawned
upon him. He saw, cleared eyed, that he was in the Valley of the Shadow.
All the life that was in him was fading, fainting, making toward death.

He realized how much he slept, and how much he desired to sleep. Of old,
he had hated sleep. It had robbed him of precious moments of living.
Four hour