her; for of that he gave evidence almost as conclusive as would have been furnished by the ceaseless reiteration of that spoken devotion which a woman craves, without hope of receiving, from the man she loves. But things had come to him so easily, so independent of any effort of his own, that he was become the chief of optimists, imbued with the serene and confident laisser aller of the clan; and, now that association was making her intimate with his methods of work, she found them to be wholly haphazard, inspired merely by the whim of the moment, unregulated by any remotest evidence of system. His performances were the meaningless flashes and snaps of Chinese crackers, not the steady and purposeful, if less imposing, fire of a skilfully laid fuse, leading on to great results. His confidence in his own ability, in the certainty of his ultimate triumph, was so absolute that he was content with the minimum of endeavor, oblivious to the fact that only statues can remain thus passive with the assurance that laurel wreaths will be laid before them. He did not realize that the living must pluck their laurels for themselves.

[3]

Lacking the initiative which is its indispensable ally, Vane nevertheless possessed all the impatience of restraint or routine characteristic of the creative faculty. A year of editorial work was sufficient to convince him that it was not possible for such a temperament as his to be trammelled by fixed hours, and strait-jacketed by observance of detail. He[4] resigned his position, on the plea of devoting himself entirely to writing, and there ensued a period during which he sunned himself in society's favour, and received his share of flattery in return for several trifles contributed to the magazines, but created nothing worthy even of the infinitesimal effort which he made. A man had to think, to arrange, to compose, he told his wife. Rome was not built in a day, and the mere manual act of transferring his thoughts to paper was a trifle, when contrasted with the process of incubation. So month after month dragged by, and little by little, as his novelty wore off, John Vane dropped out of society's consideration as a literary potentiality, and came to be regarded as nothing more than one of many good-looking, agreeable men-about-town, to whom, in the matter of his wife and his worldly weal, the Fates had been generous beyond the ordinary.

[4]

One of the first unmistakable signs of degeneration was his now constant complaint that he was unappreciated. The average man's share of applause is in strict proportion to his deserts. In Vane's 

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