"Working! Me? I don't _work_ anywhere. I am a literary scavenger. I haunt the intellectual slaughter pens, and live by the putrid offal that self-respecting writers reject. I glean the stinking materials for my stories from the sewers and cesspools of life. For the dollars they pay, I furnish my readers with those thrills that public decency forbids them to experience at first hand. I am a procurer for the purposes of mental prostitution. My books breed moral pestilence and spiritual disease. The unholy filth I write fouls the minds and pollutes the imaginations of my readers. I am an instigator of degrading immorality and unmentionable crimes. _Work_! No, young man, I don't work. Just now, I'm doing penance in this damned town. My rotten imaginings have proven too much--even for me--and the doctors sent me West to recuperate," The artist could find no words that would answer. In silence, the two men turned away from the mountains, and started back along the avenue by which they had come. When they had walked some little distance, the young man said, "This is your first visit to Fairlands, Mr. Lagrange?" "I was here last year"--answered the other--"here and in the hills yonder. Have _you_ been much in the mountains?" "Not in California. This is my first trip to the West. I have seen something of the mountains, though, at tourist resorts--abroad." "Which means," commented the other, "that you have never seen them at all." Aaron King laughed. "I dare say you are right." "And you--?" asked the novelist, abruptly, eyeing his companion. "What brought you to this community that thinks so much more of its millionaires than it does of its mountains? Have _you_ come to Fairlands to work?" "I hope to," answered the artist. "There are--there are reasons why I do not care to work, for the present, in the East. I confess it was because I understood that Fairlands offered exceptional opportunities for a portrait painter that I came here. To succeed in my work, you know, one must come in touch with people of influence. It is sometimes easier to interest them when they are away from their homes--in some place like this--where their social duties and business cares are not so pressing." "There is no question of the material that Fairlands has to offer, Mr. King," returned the novelist, in his grim, sarcastic humor. "God! how I envy you!" he added, with a flash of earnest passion. "You are young--You are beginning your life work--You are looking forward to success--You--" "I _must_ succeed"--the painter interrupted impetuously--"I must." "Succeed in _what_? What do you mean by success?" "Surely, _you_ should understand what I mean by success," the younger man retorted. "You who have gained--" "Oh, yes; I forgot"--came the quick interruption--"I am the _famous_ Conrad Lagrange. Of course, you, too, must succeed. You must become the _famous_ Aaron King. But perhaps you will tell me why you must, as you call it, succeed?"