not merciless. Maupassant was nothing if not merciless. He
would not have spared Mlle. Ange'lique. Besides, why should I libel M.
Joumand? Poor--no, not poor M. Joumand! I warned myself against pitying
him. One touch of 'sentimentality,' and I should be lost. M. Joumand was
ridiculous. I must keep him so. But--what was his position in life? Was
he a lawyer perhaps?--or the proprietor of a shop in the Rue de Rivoli?
I toyed with the possibility that he kept a fan shop--that the business
had once been a prosperous one, but had gone down, down, because of his
infatuation for this woman to whom he was always giving fans--which she
always smashed.... '"Ah monsieur, cruel and ungrateful to me though she
is, I swear to you that if I had anything left to give, it should be
hers; but," he stared at me with his old hopeless eyes, "the fan she
broke to-night was the last--the last, monsieur--of my stock." Down
below,'--but I pulled myself together, and asked pardon of my Muse.

It may be that I had offended her by my fooling. Or it may be that she
had a sisterly desire to shield Mlle. Ange'lique from my mordant art. Or
it may be that she was bent on saving M. de Maupassant from a dangerous
rivalry. Anyway, she withheld from me the inspiration I had so
confidently solicited. I could not think what had led up to that scene
on the terrace. I tried hard and soberly. I turned the 'chose vue' over
and over in my mind, day by day, and the fan-stump over and over in my
hand. But the 'chose a' figurer'--what, oh what, was that? Nightly I
revisited the cafe', and sat there with an open mind--a mind wide-open
to catch the idea that should drop into it like a ripe golden plum. The
plum did not ripen. The mind remained wide-open for a week or more, but
nothing except that phrase about the sea rustled to and fro in it.

A full quarter of a century has gone by. M. Joumand's death, so far too
fat was he all those years ago, may be presumed. A temper so violent as
Mlle. Angelique's must surely have brought its owner to the grave, long
since. But here, all unchanged, the stump of her fan is; and once more I
turn it over and over in my hand, not learning its secret--no, nor
even trying to, now. The chord this relic strikes in me is not one of
curiosity as to that old quarrel, but (if you will forgive me) one
of tenderness for my first effort to write, and for my first hopes of
excellence.

'HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' 1910.

It would seem that I