boiler, and leave me alone, Allan," I said. "You
do not understand my difficulties in the least. It is simply a matter of
selection. My brain is full of ideas--brimming over. I want to be sure
that I am choosing the best."

There came to me from across the room a grunt of contempt.

"Pot-boiler indeed! What about short stories at ten guineas a time, must
begin in the middle, scented and padded to order, Anthony Hopeish, with
the sugar of Austin Dobson and the pepper of Kipling shaken on _ad
lib._? Man alive, do you know what pot-boilers are? It's a perfect
conservatory you're living in. Got any tobacco, Arnold?"

I jerked my pouch across the room, and it was caught with a deft little
backward swing of the hand. Allan Mabane was an M.C.C. man, and a
favourite point with his captain.

"You've got me on the hip, Allan," I answered, rising suddenly from my
chair and walking restlessly up and down the large bare room. "The devil
himself might have put those words into your mouth. They are
pot-boilers, every one of them, and I am sick of it. I want to do
something altogether different. I am sure that I can, but I have got
into the way of writing those other things, and I can't get out of it.
That is why I am sitting here like an owl."

Mabane refilled his pipe and smoked contentedly.

"I know exactly how you're feeling, old chap," he said sympathetically.
"I get a dash of the same thing sometimes--generally in the springtime.
It begins with a sort of wistfulness, a sense of expansion follows, you
go about all the time with your head in the clouds. You want to collect
all the beautiful things in life and express them. Oh, I know all about
it. It generally means a girl. Where were you last night?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Where I shall be to-night, to-morrow night--where I was a year ago.
That is the trouble of it all. One is always in the same place."

He shook his head.

"It is a very bad attack," he said. "Your generalities may be all right,
but they are not convincing."

"I have not spoken a word to a woman, except to Mrs. Burdett, for a week
or more," I declared.

Mabane resumed his work. Such a discussion, his gesture seemed to
indicate, was not worth continuing. But I continued, following out my
train of thought, though I spoke as much to myself as to my friend.

"You are right about my stories," I admitted. "I have painted
rose-coloured pictures of an imaginary life, and publishers have bought
them, a