undreds of pages, and say it in a couple of
paragraphs. Every word must illuminate the past, in every sentence may
be found the sequel."

"Cintras, I vow your case is hopeless. You are a regular cherry-stone
carver. Here you've shown us the skeletons of two stories and yet given
none of them flesh enough to live upon." "Berkeley you belong to a past
full of novelistic monsters. You are the three volume man with the happy
ending tacked on willy-nilly. It is the tact of omission--" "Hang your
art-for-art theories. I'll make more money than Cintras ever did when I
publish my "Art of Anonymous Letter Writing!" cut in Hodson. Cintras
calmly continued, "Here is my title and see if you can follow me."

INELUCTABLE

The light waned as with tense fingers he turned the round,
bevelled-edge screw of the lamp. Darkness, immitigable,
profound, and soft, must soon succeed yellow radiance. To
face this gloom, to live in it and breathe of it, set his
heart harshly beating. Yet he slowly turned with tense
fingers the bevelled-edge screw of the lamp. He would
presently be forced to a criticism of the day, that day,
which must brilliantly flame when night closed upon him. As
in the vivid agony endured between two bell-strokes of a
clock, he strove to answer the oppressing shape threatening
him. And his fingers lingeringly revolved the lamp-screw
with its brass and bevelled-edge. If only some gust of
resolution would arise like the sudden scud of the squall
that whitens far-away level summer seas, and drive forth
pampered procrastinations! Then might his fingers become
flexile, his mind untied. Poor, drab seconds that fooled
with eternity and supped on vain courage as they went
trooping by. Could not one keen point of consciousness
abide? Why must all go humming into oblivion like untuned
values? He grasped at a single strand of recollection; he
saw her parted lips, the passionate reproach of her eyes and
felt her strenuous tacit acquiescence; he sensed the
richness of her love. So he stood, unstable, vacillating and
a treacherous groper amidst cruel shards of an ineluctable
memory, powerless to stay the fair phantom and fearful of
looking night squarely in the front. And he remained a
dweller in the shadows, as he faintly fingered the
bevelled-edge screw of the l