pretending to
work, but his brain was as dry as a soda-cracker. It was that natural
revulsion of the idealist following the first glow. Here he was, up
against a reality, and yet with no definite plan, not even a name for
his paper, and he had not even begun to penetrate the life about him.
The throbbing moment had arrived when he must set his theories into
motion, drive them out into the lives of the people, and get reactions.
But how? In what way? His brain refused to think, and he felt nothing
save a misery and poverty of the spirit that were unendurable.

It seemed to him suddenly as if he had hastily embarked on a search for
the fountain of eternal youth--a voyage that followed mirages, and was
hollow and illusory. Beginnings, after the first flush, always have this
quality of fake, and Joe was standing in the shadow-land between two
lives. The old life was receding in the past; the new life had not yet
appeared. Without training, without experience, without definite
knowledge of the need to be met, with only a strong desire and a mixed
ideal, and almost without his own volition, he found himself now sitting
at a desk in West Tenth Street, with two employees, and nothing to do.
How out of this emptiness was he to create something vital?

This naturally brought a pang he might have anticipated. He had a sudden
powerful hankering for the old life. That at least was man-size--his job
had been man's work. He looked back at those fruitful laborious days,
with their rich interest and absorbing details, their human
companionships, and had an almost irrepressible desire to rush out, take
the elevated train, go down East Eighty-first Street, ascend the
elevator, ring the bell, and enter his dominion of trembling, thundering
presses. He could smell the old smells, he could see the presses and the
men, he could hear the noise. That was where he belonged. Voluntarily he
had exiled himself from happiness and use. He wanted to go back--wanted
it hard, almost groaned with homesickness.

Such struggles are death throes or birth throes. They are as real as two
men wrestling. Joe could sit still no longer, could mask no longer the
combat within him. So he rose hastily and went out and wandered about
the shabby, unfriendly neighborhood. He had a mad desire, almost
realized, to take the car straight to Eighty-first Street, and only the
thought of Marty Briggs in actual possession held him back. Finally he
went back and took lunch, a