"I'm glad you spoke up, old fellow," I said, taking his arm.
He modified his pace a little. "Why is it," he exclaimed, "that
every other profession can be taken seriously, but that a novelist's
work is supposed to be mere play? Good God! don't we suffer enough?
Have we not hard brain work and drudgery of desk work and tedious
gathering of statistics and troublesome search into details? Have
we not an appalling weight of responsibility on us?--and are we not
at the mercy of a thousand capricious chances?"
"Come now," I exclaimed, "you know that you are never so happy as
when you are writing."
"Of course," he replied; "but that doesn't make me resent such an
attack the less. Besides, you don't know what it is to have to
write in such an atmosphere as ours; it's like a weight on one's
pen. This life here is not life at all--it's a daily death, and
it's killing the book too; the last chapters are wretched--I'm
utterly dissatisfied with them."
"As for that," I said calmly, "you are no judge at all. You can
never tell the worth of your own work; the last bit is splendid."
"I could have done it better," he groaned.
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