s work, you felt
that you were in the presence of an exceptional mind--in the presence of
a man who saw things, great things, things worth seeing, which were
hidden from other men--who saw them, as it were, by flashes of
lightning. That was just how he did see them--by flashes of lightning.
He saw them for an instant, then no more. Partially, and not the whole.
In a lurid light, which almost blinded the beholder. So, when you read a
work of his, you were startled, first by the light, then by the
darkness. It seemed strange that a man who one moment could be so light,
the next could be so dull. Soon you began to be irritated. Then you were
bored. When you reached the end--if you ever reached the end--you
wondered if the man was mad, or if he was merely stupid. But he was
neither mad nor stupid. He was a genius, who, so far, declined to allow
himself to be managed. When he became manageable, he would cease to be a
genius--in the sense in which the word is here being used. Then, if he
wrote at all, he would write what the plainest of plain men could
plainly read.

The idea of his story was not an unattractive one--to a certain sort of
writer. It was to be the story of a beggar, of a man who asked for alms
in the streets, and who, by the exercise of certain arts, which verged
upon the marvellous, amassed a fortune. Geoffrey Ford proposed to follow
the beggar, as he amassed his fortune, and to show what he did with his
fortune, when he once had gained it. And in the little room upstairs,
the wife sat with the children, watching over their every movement to
see that they made no unnecessary sound. They were good children. When
papa was writing, even the baby seemed to do her best to keep the peace.
The little ones seemed willing to give up the birthright of the
child--the right to enter into the heritage of life with a rush of happy
noise. And, below, the husband, and the father, wrote, and wrote, and
wrote, and rushed about the room, chasing his dreams, so that he might
imprison them, with ink, on paper.

[Illustration: "HE FELT THAT SHE WAS TREMBLING."]

The days went by, and the story grew. And so wrapped up was the writer
in its growth, that he failed to notice that about his wife there was
something unusual, and even a little strange. She was interested in his
work, there could be no doubt of that. But she did not, as he was
inclined to think that she was apt to do, worry him with continual
questions as to how it was