Can you compare the vitality of your business with that
of the men who create their own ideas? There is no routine about that.
And after all, isn't that more vital than anything else can be?"

"Yes," said Smith, "I presume it is. Certainly it is for the genius;
probably even for any man of high and true talent, a man able to lose
himself in his own creation. Undoubtedly that is the only real elixir
of life, the only ineffable exaltation. But isn't that carrying your
argument out too far? We can scarcely set a standard for creative
geniuses--there are too few of them. You spoke of the men who create
their own ideas. How many of them are there? There are thousands of
near-authors, near-musicians, near-artists, near-poets, who are
painfully remote from the genuine article. Do you understand what I
mean?"

"Oh, yes. And that is so. I myself have at least seen that."

"Of course it is so. And do you suppose these second-rate creators get
the real thrill? Not they. In their hearts they know they are frauds,
impostors, dilettantes at best. There is no vitality to their grip on
things, and they know it. They deal with the spurious and fustian from
cradle to grave. Why, I myself know innumerable people that spend
their lives in trying to persuade themselves into thinking they are
doing something worth while!"

Mentally the girl winced; the words went home so close to Pelgram, who
had been in her own mind. It was this very feeling of protest, for
which Smith now found voice, that had sickened her of Pelgram.

"Such people get little out of life," the underwriter went on,
"probably first because they are constantly uneasy in the knowledge
that they are charlatans, and second because they do not have anything
real, anything alive, to face. They deal in half-tones, in nuances--"

Nuances! Was the man clairvoyant? He had suggested that an
underwriter ought to be. Helen felt that this channel had been pursued
far enough.

"No one defends dilettanteism as such," she said.

"One can, though, easily enough, if one wishes," Smith promptly
responded. "After all, to do things for the love of doing them is the
right way. But they must be the right things, and to get the full
taste out of anything one must have faced real dragons to attain it.
There is no lack of dragons in the insurance business. You're fighting
them all the time. If it isn't against time to keep your premiums up,
it's against fate to keep