"I'd thought of doing that," Jean conceded. "But isn't that a monstrous way to treat a literary genius?" "Not at all!" she protested. "By taking on a work that will require more time than his lifetime, he is defeating himself." "There's that way of looking at it," agreed the artist. "All right, Droozle," he called. "You heard us talking and you know we mean it. No more writing until we reach an agreement--or else!" Droozle quit writing at once. While the girl and the young artist watched anxiously, Droozle first wandered about uncertainly for a few minutes and then curled up on a newspaper and went to sleep. He slept all evening. * * * * * "He has beaten us again," Jean Lanni told Judy Stokes resignedly when she arrived at his studio the following evening. He watched Droozle fascinatedly as the snake moved his restless tail over the margins of newspapers spread on the floor. "He doesn't know yet that I know. I discovered the fraud only by the merest accident." "He isn't writing?" she asked, perusing the newspapers for signs of Droozle's elegant script. "He most certainly is." "Where?" "Look at him!" Jean exclaimed, ignoring her question. "He's doing it again!" Droozle had ceased wriggling for the moment and lay there shaking violently, as though he had malaria. Then the paroxysm passed and he took up his restless movements again. "The poor genius," mourned Judy. "He must be sick with frustration." "Sick, my eye! That snake has learned to centrifuge part of his blood while it is in his body, so that the hemoglobin is separated out. The result is--invisible ink!" "Why, I'll tell that Droozle off!" raved Judy. "Here I sat feeling sorry for the little crumb!" Droozle did not mind. While she ranted, he brazenly began writing in visible ink once more. "How did you catch him at it?" she asked. "I used a piece of his newspaper to pick up a hot saw blade. The heat turned the invisible ink brown." "Droozle," said the girl passionately, looking down at the writer, "you know your master is in great need of funds. _Where_ is your sense of loyalty and self-sacrifice for the one who has cared for you?" Droozle wrote poetically, "Is there Joy or any other good thing in Abnegation? Is there Beauty in Sacrifice? What Handsome purpose do these serve a being in his race with Time? His Days will soon be spent and they will come no more; thus my Criterion: Is This the most Joy gathering, Awareness touching, Beauty sensing act of which he is capable? None other is worthy of his time!" "Men are not so selfish," objected Jean. "I am not a man," wrote Droozle simply. Jean turned staunchly to the girl. "Judy, he has convinced me. I have been wrong about him. From now on _he can write whatever he likes_!" "Good-by to our hopes then?"