He was pregnant with his idea. He rose from his bed betimes. He breathed a strangely fragrant air. He looked at the beautiful world. He wrote. He mentioned his little employment to no one: he felt rather ashamed of it, in fact; but it infatuated him. He encountered some awful tough spots, and at times he almost despaired--but he could not give up. Something within him, which he himself was conscious he did not understand, tortured him to go on. All day long, while at his business, his meals, his shaving, his story turned and twisted and talked in the back of his head. Despair alternated with exultation. At hours there came a gusto to his work; words that he had heard or read, forgotten and never used, came back to him from heaven knows where, and sprang to his pen at the felicitous instance. He felt that his mind was more alert than he remembered it to have ever been; he felt that his eyes were brighter; his hands, his whole right arm, felt strong. He knew as he worked that this was character, and this was sentiment, and this was humor. He was shaken by the respiration of a heady drama. He felt that this--was almost genius! And he was aghast that he had lived such a dull life hitherto when this capacity had been in him. He possessed little theoretic knowledge of writing; his story grew naturally, like a tree: he was intelligent, and he had a story to tell which must be told. In the matter of technical construction he followed in a general way, intuitively, unconsciously for the most part, without elaborate examination, the form of a short story as he was acquainted with it through his reading of stories. He wandered alone at night, oblivious of anything else, thinking, thinking his story over; and he felt good in his brain and in his heart and in his stomach. He felt virile, elated, full of power, and strangely happy. The joy of creating a thing of art was upon him. Thrills ran down his spine and into his legs; he would grin to himself in the dark streets; and sometimes he laughed aloud. Everything else he neglected. He could not even read the newspapers; he stayed at home two days from business; he worked early and late, and walked up and down, throbbing, meantimes. The story was almost finished. The story _was finished_. What would Louise say? Would she think that he ought not to have written, ought not to make public, so intimate a history? Then in the story he had carried things further than they were in fact: the artistic instinct had formally plighted the lovers' troth. He thought of submitting his manuscript without showing it to Louise. Would it not be fine for her to discover the story in print! But Keyes had to read that story to someone or blow up. * * * * *