"Do you want a fellow to go and poke his head into trouble and get himself mixed up in a tragedy so that he can paint better?" insisted Burleson, scornfully. "There's usually no necessity to hunt trouble," said Annan. "But you say that Kelly never had any and that he'd paint better if he had." "Trouble _might_ be the making of Kelly Neville," mused Ogilvy, "and it might not. It depends, John, not on the amount and quality of the hell, but on the man who's frying on the gridiron." Annan said: "Personally I don't see how Kelly _could_ paint happiness or sorrow or wonder or fear into any of his creations any more convincingly than he does. And yet--and yet--sometimes we love men for their shortcomings--for the sincerity of their blunders--for the fallible humanity in them. That after all is where love starts. The rest--what Kelly shows us--evokes wonder, delight, awe, enthusiasm.... If he could only make us love him--" "_I_ love him!" said Burleson. "We all are inclined to--if we could get near enough to him," said Annan with a faint smile. "Him--or his work?" "Both, John. There's a vast amount of nonsense talked about the necessity of separation between a man and his work--that the public has no business with the creator, only with his creations. It is partly true. Still, no man ever created anything in which he did not include a sample of himself--if not what he himself is, at least what he would like to be and what he likes and dislikes in others. No creator who shows his work can hope to remain entirely anonymous. And--I am not yet certain that the public has no right to make its comments on the man who did the work as well as on the work which it is asked to judge." "The man is nothing; the work everything," quoted Burleson, heavily. "So I've heard," observed Annan, blandly. "It's rather a precious thought, isn't it, John?" "Do you consider that statement to be pure piffle?" "Partly, dear friend. But I'm one of those nobodies who cherish a degenerate belief that man comes first, and then his works, and that the main idea is to get through life as happily as possible with the minimum of inconvenience to others. Human happiness is what I venture to consider more important than the gim-cracks created by those same humans. Man first, then man's work, that's the order of mundane importance to me. And if you've got to criticise the work, for God's sake do it with your hand on the man's shoulder." "Our little socialist," said Ogilvy, patting Annan's blonde head. "He wants to love everybody and everybody to love him, especially when they're ornamental and feminine. Yes? No?" he asked, fondly coddling Annan, who submitted with a bored air and tried to kick his shins. Later, standing in a chance group on the sidewalk before scattering to their several occupations, Burleson said: