n--auto-intoxication maybe it is, I don't know--and
I'm as happy as a child, or a god, or a bird, or any completely happy
thing you can fancy. Then again, as it's been the past week, or the past
month for that matter, I don't seem to be able to do anything new. On top
of this everything I've already done fairly personifies and leers at me.
I get so that I fairly hate myself for the utter failure that I am, that
at least I have been so far. I get to analyzing myself; I can't help it,
and the result isn't pleasant. I've been doing so lately. I don't
overestimate myself in the least, Elice girl. Practically, commercially,
I'm a zero. I'm simply not built that way. If I'm ever of any use in the
world, ever amount to anything whatever, it will be in an impractical,
artistic way. Whether I'll ever win out so--oh, for light, for light!...
Frankly, the new novel is going badly, Elice, cursedly bad!"

"I'm sorry, Steve. You know--"

"Yes, I know."

"I've believed always, and still believe--"

"Yes, I know that too."

"You've got it in you to win; I know it, and you know it. You've done
good work already, lots of it, and--"

"Wade into him and lick him!" bitterly. "He's only three sizes larger
than you are, and afraid--I know you can lick him. Wade in!"

The girl said nothing.

"Forgive me, Elice," with quick contrition. "That was nasty of me, I
confess. But I'm sore to-day, raw. It's genius I suppose," sarcastically,
"genius unappreciated."

Still the girl said nothing.

"If I could only get a ray of light, a lead, the flutter of a signal from
outside the wall. But I keep hammering my head at it day after day, and
it remains precisely as it was years ago when I began. It's maddening."

Yet the girl was silent, waiting silent.

"And, last of all, if I should eventually succeed, should break through
into my own, as Darley Roberts says, even then--from any point of view
it isn't a cheerful prospect."

"As Mr. Roberts says? What was that, Steve?"

"I referred to the reward, pecuniary reward. He figured it out in dollars
and cents once when he wanted to bring me out of the clouds. Looking at
it that way, there isn't much to the game even for the winners, Elice."

"Not much if you win? I can't believe it, Steve. I always supposed--"

"Everybody does. The public, the uninitiated, are long on supposing. Even
the would-be's like myself delude themselves and build air castles until
some hard-headed friend calls the turn