ly, "the main thing is to go on."

"This morning?"

"Certainly."

"But I don't want to go on this morning. That is the flaw in your
literary method. It makes me go on whether I want to or not. Now the
really top-notchers never do that. They are as full of stoppages as a
freight train. Fact. They only create when the spirit moves them."

"Aren't you thinking of Quakers?" suggested Desire sweetly. "Besides
you are not creating. You are compiling--a very different thing."

"But what is the use of compiling an off chapter when I know it is
going to be an off one?"

Desire threw down her pencil.

"Oh, Benis," she said. "I don't like this. Don't let us play with
words. Surely you are not getting tired--you can't be."

Her eyes, urgent and truth-compelling, forced an answer.

"I don't quite know," he said. "But I am certainly off work at present.
There may be all kinds of reasons. You will have to be patient, Desire."

"Then," in a low voice, "it isn't only indolence?"

He was moved to candor. "It isn't indolence at all. I have always been
a fairly good worker, and will be again. But the driving force has
shifted. I have not been doing good work and I know it. The more I know
it the worse the work will become.... It doesn't matter, really,
child," he added gently, seeing that she had turned away. "The world
can wait for the bit of knowledge I can give it."

Desire, whose face was invisible, took a moment to answer this. When
she did her voice was carefully with-out expression.

"Then this ends my usefulness. You will not need me any more."

The professor, who had been nursing his knee on the corner of the desk,
straightened up so suddenly that he heard his spine click.

"What's this?" he said. (Good heavens--the girl was as full of
surprises as a grab-bag!)

"It was for the book you needed me, was it not? That was my share of
our partnership."

("Now you've done it!" shouted an exultant voice in the professor's
brain. "Oh, you are an ass!")

"Shut up!" said Spence irritably. "I wasn't talking to you," he
explained apologetically. "It's just a horrid little devil I converse
with sometimes. What I meant was--" He did not seem to know what he
meant and looked rather helplessly out of the window. "Oh, I say," he
said presently, "you are not going to--to act like that, are you?
Agitation's so frightfully bad for me. Ask old Bones."

"You are not agitated," said Desire coldly. "Please be serious."

"I am. De