"I regret this, about Entry 2," said the Judge, with his brilliant black gaze. "'Bandwomen' is a fine novel, my dear fellow,--fine! But as to that little plan of mine--giving our undivided time and abilities henceforth to some more remunerative kind of work? Gad, Charles!--wouldn't it be wise?" And then Charles, after staring blankly at his relative's odd handsome figure, suddenly burst out laughing.... But later he stood at his window, staring silently down into the lamplit street. A rare depression had suddenly closed over him. Oddly enough, it seemed to have little to do with his great repulse as a writer. After all, "Bondwomen," good though he felt it to be, did not represent his best thought now; moreover, that the next publisher would jump at it still seemed to him as certain as Judgment Day. The young man's deep dissatisfactions were with all the terms and conditions of his writer's life. Long ago he had said to a friend once, "I can't afford to give my time to making money," and the remark, being repeated, had gained him the reputation of a fool's wit, none recognizing that he had practically bagged it outright from a fellow of the name of Agassiz. And there (he was thinking) was the measure of the degree to which he had withdrawn from the accepted ways of men, from all the currents of stimulating life. Making money, after all, was the "battle of life," and he--he had thought it often before now--had placed himself with the noncombatants. All day, downtown there, vigorous beings met and fought, crossed wills, locked minds, pitted strength against strength; while he, Charles, spent his days with women and children and his nights alone in this room, palely pondering over ethical subtleties. He remembered something Mary Wing had said to him one day last winter: "You're a great deal more like a woman than a man; don't you know it?" On the whole, Mary had meant that as a compliment, but the word had stuck in him like a knife. He had bent his life to be a writer--and for what? Merely that those who knew him best might view him, tolerantly, as a member of the Third Sex. "A writer ought to go out once a month and do something cruel," he thought moodily. "Assault and battery.... Blood in rivers...." He was disgusted with tutoring and writing, with Woman and all womanish ways.