"Preach if you want to; you can't hurt my feelings now." Armstrong grew calm, for the first time that evening. "When a fellow has worked as I have worked for years, and hoped against hope, and still hoped on and worked on after failure and failure and failure three times repeated--No, don't worry about hurting my feelings, Harry. Say what you please." "I wasn't going to hurt your feelings," evenly; "I was only going to preach a little. I merely wanted to take exception to that forgetting business. If you'll just hold hard for a bit you'll forget normally, not artificially. Another six months and you'll be hard at another scheme, developing it; and the way you feel now--It'll be a joke then, a sort of nightmare to laugh over." "Never.... Don't get restless; I'm not irresponsible now. I'm merely telling you. I've been asleep and dreaming for a long time, but at last I'm awake. Come what may, and truly as I'm telling you now, I'll never write another novel. I couldn't if I wanted to--I've tried and know; and I wouldn't if I could. There's a limit to everything, and the limit of my patience and endurance is reached. I'm done for now and for all time." The voice was not excited now or unnaturally tense, but normal, almost conversational. "For ten years I've fought the good fight. Every spare hour of that time that I could muster I've worked. I've lain awake night after night and night after night tossing and planning and struggling for a definite end. The thing got to be a sort of religion to me. I convinced myself that it was my work in the big scheme, my allotted task, and I tried faithfully to do it. I never spared myself. I dissected others, of course; but I dissected myself most, clear to the bone. I even took a sort of joy in it when it hurt most, for I felt it was my contribution and big. I'm not bragging now, mind. I'm merely telling you as it was. I've gone on doing this for ten years, I say. When I failed again I tried harder still. I still believed in myself--and others. Recognition, appreciation, might be delayed, but eventually it would come, it must; for this was my work,--to please others, to amuse them, to carry them temporarily out of the rut of their work-a-day lives and make them forget. I believed this, I say, believed and hoped and waited and worked on until the last few months. Then--I told you what happened. Then--" For the first time the speaker paused. He shrugged characteristically. "But what's the use of disturbing the corpse. I've simply misread the signs in the sky--that's all. I couldn't produce a better novel than I've written if I had the longevity of the Wandering Jew and wrote to the end--for I've done my best. The great public that I've torn myself to pieces to please has seen the offering and passed it by. They will have none of it--and they're the arbiters." He shrugged again, the narrow shoulders eloquent. "So be it. I accept; but I offer no more. For all time, to finality, I'm done, done!"