He was wondering, with the dread that the prospect of mental effort always roused in him, how on earth he was ever to write three whole columns about the Annual Business Men's Picnic of the preceding afternoon. Describing in humorous yet friendly detail the three-legged race, the ball game between the fats and the leans, the dinner in the grove, the concert by Foote's full band of twenty pieces, the purse given to Charlie Waterhouse as the most popular man on Simpson Street. He had a thick wad of notes up at the rooms, but his heart was not in the laborious task of expanding them. He knew precisely what old man Boice expected of him--plenty of 'personal mention' for all the advertisers, giving space for space. Each day that he put it off would make the task harder. If he didn't have the complete story in by Thursday night, Humphrey would skin him alive; yet here it was Wednesday morning, and he was planning to spend as much of the day as possible with the increasingly unresponsive Corinne. Life was difficult! He was aware of a morbid craving in his digestive tract. He decided to get an ice-cream soda on the way back to the office. He would have liked about half a pound of chocolate creams. The Italian kind, with all the sweet in the white part. But here character intervened. A corner of his mind dwelt unceasingly on queer difficult feelings that came. These had flared out in the unpleasant incident of Mamie Wilcox and the tandem; and again in the present flirtation with Corinne. In a way that he found perplexing, this stir of emotion was related to his gifts. He couldn't let one go without the other. There had been moments--in the old days--when a feeling of power had surged through him. It was a wonderful, irresistible feeling. Riding that wave, he was equal to anything. But it had frightened him. The memory of it frightened him now. He had put _Iolanthe_ through, it was true, but he had also nearly eloped with Ernestine Lambert. He had completely lost his head--debts, everything! Yes, it was as well that Miss Wombast couldn't read his thoughts. She wouldn't have known how to interpret them. She hadn't the capacity to understand the wide swift stream of feeling down which an imaginative boy floats all but rudderless into manhood. She couldn't know of his pitifully inadequate little attempts to shape a course, to catch this breeze and that, even to square around and breast the current of life. Henry said politely:-- 'Good-morning, Miss Wombast. I just looked in for the notes of new books.' 'Oh,' she replied quickly. 'I'm sorry you troubled. Mr Boice asked me to mail it to the office at the end of the month. I just sent it--this morning.' She saw his face fall. He mumbled something that sounded like, 'Oh--all right! Doesn't matter.' For a moment he stood waving his stick in jerky, aimless little circles. Then went off down the stairs. 2