At once he had begun to crowd himself. For a few weeks he had found himself earning more money than he had ever thought possible from his daily work. But it took him only a short time to flood the market of Sunday papers which he had built up for himself. He had not known how thin was the vein which he had been working. In a certain foolish contempt for the thing which he did easily he had thought that he could turn it out mechanically, without heart in it, and in any quantity. He was sharply undeceived. The first few batches of stories that came back did no more than annoy him. But as the refusals became more and more perfunctory, and more carefully polite, Wardwell knew, with sickening insight, that his stories were not even being read by the editors who used to welcome them. He knew that he had lost his power through despising it. He had writhed on in ugly despair, cursing the facility with which he could still write; for he knew that it was that very facility which was now his undoing. He had not hoped, but he had kept on trying. Now his money was gone and he must find something. Jim Ray was sympathetic, and heartily sceptical. "All rot!" he growled. "Stop bitting your finger ends and ease up a little. Your face looks like a rat's with the ferret about three jumps behind. Quit it. Borrow some money. Here, I'm as poor as my own devil but I can get you some. There's lots of the stuff around somewhere. Borrow a hundred and go up on a farm somewhere for a few weeks, and sleep." "You're all wrong," said Wardwell, still breathing hard, "there's nothing the matter with me. It's the confounded stairs here. They're so steep they lean over backward." "You need to go easy, I tell you, Jimmie. What you need is a rest." "Rest! I haven't done a stroke for six weeks!" "Probably not. But you've been bending over a typewriter till the back ribs are sticking into your lungs." "What in blazes are you talking about?" said Wardwell bluffly. "If you want to stall me off, why don't you give me the usual thing--'office all full just now, leave your name and address, we'll call you up if we need, and so forth?' Was I so useless as that when I was here?" "Jimmie," said Ray quietly, "there's plenty of work here for a man as good as you. But you're not able just now to do it, and it would kill you to try. Go home and go to bed, and let your wife take care of you." Wardwell stared at his friend, trying to outface him, to bluff the thing down by sheer stubbornness. But there was a sickening, cold weakness at the bottom of his stomach. He knew that Ray was seeing through him and finding him out as he had not been able to see himself. With an odd feeling of curiosity and detachment he walked over to a little square of mirror that hung on a pillar at just the right height for Ray to comb his bald head by. Wardwell took it off the nail and shoved it up the post about a foot and a half.