the end--for I've done my best. The
great public that I've torn myself to pieces to please has seen the
offering and passed it by. They will have none of it--and they're the
arbiters." He shrugged again, the narrow shoulders eloquent. "So be it. I
accept; but I offer no more. For all time, to finality, I'm done, done!"

"Even if some of your books should win?"

"If every one of them should do so. If half a dozen publishers came to me
personally and begged me to resume work. I may be a poor artist, may lack
completely the artistic subservience to or superiority to discouragement,
probably I do; but at least I know I'm human. I'm like a well in the
desert that's been pumped empty and left never a mark on the surrounding
sand. I couldn't produce again if I wanted to; I'm drained dry."

Randall said nothing. He knew this other man.

"I tell you I'm awake, Harry, at last, and see things as they are; things
now so childishly obvious that it seems incredible I could have gone on
so long without recognizing them. People prate about appreciation of
artists of various kinds and of their work, grow maudlin over it by
artificial light in the small hours of the night. And how do they
demonstrate it? Once in a while, the isolated exception that proves the
rule, by recognizing and rewarding the genius in his lifetime. Once in a
very, very long time, I say. Mind, I don't elevate myself as a genius.
I'm merely speaking as an observer who's awakened and knows. As a rule
what do they do? Let him struggle and work and eat his heart out in
obscurity and without recognition. Let him starve himself body and soul.
After he's dead, after a year or a hundred years, after there is no
possibility of his receiving the reward or the inspiration, they arouse.
His fame spreads. His name becomes a household word. They desecrate his
grave, if they can find it, by hanging laurel on his tombstone. They
tear the wall-paper from the house where he once chanced to live into
ribbons for souvenirs. If he happens to be a painter the picture that
brought him enough perhaps to keep body and soul together for a month is
fought for until eventually it sells for a fortune. If he was a writer
they bid for a scrap of his manuscript more than he received for his
whole work. There are exceptions, I say; but even exceptions only prove
the rule. Think over the names of the big artists, the big geniuses. How
many of them are alive or were appreciated in their own lives?