hance and Fate.

"And always Barry Annan left the victim of his tact and technique
agreeably trapped, suffering gratefully, excited by self-approval to the
verge of sentimental tears.

"'That'll make 'em ruffle their plumage and gulp down a sob or two,' he
reflected, his tongue in his cheek, a little intoxicated, as usual, by his
own infernal facility.

"He lit a cigarette, shuffled his manuscript, numbered the pages, and
stuffed them into his pocket. The damned thing was done."

And again:--

"Considering her, now, a half-smile touching his lips, it occurred to him
that here, in her, he saw his audience in the flesh. This was what his
written words did to his readers. His skill held their attention; his
persuasive technique, unsuspected, led them where he guided. His
cleverness meddled with their intellectual emotions. The more primitive
felt it physically, too.

"When he dismissed them at the bottom of the last page they went away
about their myriad vocations. But his brand was on their hearts. They were
his, these countless listeners whom he had never seen--never would see.

"He checked his agreeable revery. This wouldn't do. He was becoming smug.
Reaction brought the inevitable note of alarm. Suppose his audience tired
of him. Suppose he lost them. Chastened, he realised what his audience
meant to him--these thousands of unknown people whose minds he titivated,
whose reason he juggled with and whose heart-strings he yanked, his tongue
in his cheek."

And this further on:--

"He went into his room but did not light the lamp. For a long while he sat
by the open window looking out into the darkness of Governor's Place.

"It probably was nothing he saw out there that brought to his lips a
slight recurrent smile.

"The bad habit of working late at night was growing on this young man. It
is a picturesque habit, and one of the most imbecile, because sound work
is done only with a normal mind.

"He made himself some coffee. A rush of genius to the head followed
stimulation. He had a grand time, revelling with pen and pad and littering
the floor with inked sheets unnumbered and still wet. His was a messy
genius. His plot-logic held by the grace of God and a hair-line. Even the
Leaning Tower of Pisa can be plumbed; and the lead dangled inside
Achilles's tendon when one held the string to the medulla of Annan's
stories."

Our young man is undergoing a variety of interesting changes:

"Partly experimental, par