Elice Gleason joined in the laugh sympathetically. The other's good spirits was irresistible.

"You seem to have been gathering valuable data," she commented drily.

"I have indeed. I couldn't well help it. I was even forced into the conviction that it was intended I should so gather." He smiled into his companion's eyes whimsically. "They're deep, those Randalls. After all is said I fancy my a.s.sistance was acquired not so much from any desire to save as to point a valuable object lesson; scatter the contagion, as it were." He paused meaningly and smiled again. "Elice mine, we're in grave danger, you and I. That worthy pair have designs upon our future. They are in the position of a certain cla.s.s, famed in adage, who desire company. The dinner is only another ill.u.s.tration of the same point."

Elice Gleason returned the smile, but quietly. She made no further comment, however, and the subject dropped.

In the hammock Armstrong swung back and forth in lazy well-being.

Overhead the mother wren, a mere brown shadow, flitted in return over their heads. There was an instant's clamor from hidden fledglings, and silence as the shadow pa.s.sed back once more into the sunshine. Watching through half-closed eyes, comfortably whimsical, Armstrong gazed into s.p.a.ce where the shadow had vanished.

"What a responsibility the care of a family must be," he commented, "particularly in this hot weather. That wren certainly has my sympathy--and respect." He paused to give the swinging hammock a fresh impulse. "I wonder though," he drifted on, "that is, if it is permissible to tangle up a variety of thoughts, if it's any harder than it is to attempt to pull an idea out of one's self by the roots and work it up into readable form with the thermometer above ninety in the shade--I wonder."

Elice Gleason was observing him now, peculiarly, understandingly.

"How is the book coming, anyway, Steve?" she asked directly.

"Which book?" smilingly.

"_The_ book, of course."

"They're all _the_ books--or were at one time." A trace, the first, of irony crept into his voice. "To be specific, however, masterpiece number one has just completed its eighteenth round trip East, and is taking a deserved rest. Masterpiece number two is _en route_ somewhere between here and New York, either coming or going, on its eleventh journey.

Number three has only five tallies to its credit--but hope springs eternal. Number four, the baby, still adolescent, has temporarily halted in its growth while I succor a needy benedict friend in distress. I believe that covers the family."

The characterization was typically nonsensical; but, sympathetic, the listener read between the sentences and understood.

"Isn't the new one coming well?" she asked low. "Tell me, Steve, honest."

"Coming well, Elice! What a question to ask of probably America's foremost living writer!" The speaker was still smiling. "What reprehensible misgiving, suspicion even!" Sudden silence, wherein bit by bit the smile faded. Silence continued until in its place came a new expression, one that changed the boy's face absolutely, made it a man's face--and not a young one at that.

"Coming well, Elice?" he repeated. "Honest, as you say, I don't know."

The hammock had become still, but the speaker did not notice, merely lying there looking up into the sunshine and the blue unseeingly.

"Sometimes I think it is, and then again--if one could only know about such things, know, not hope--of course every writer in his own soul fancies--and his friends, for that matter, are just about as useful--"

The speaker drew himself together with a shrug. For an instant his jaw locked decisively.

"I know I'm more or less irresponsible, as a rule, Elice," he a.n.a.lyzed swiftly, "and probably create the impression that I'm even more irresponsible than I am; but in this thing, at least, I'm serious. From the bottom of my soul I want to write well, want to. As I said before, sometimes I think I can--auto-intoxication maybe it is, I don't know--and I'm as happy as a child, or a G.o.d, or a bird, or any completely happy thing you can fancy. Then again, as it's been the past week, or the past month for that matter, I don't seem to be able to do anything new. On top of this everything I've already done fairly personifies and leers at me.

I get so that I fairly hate myself for the utter failure that I am, that at least I have been so far. I get to a.n.a.lyzing myself; I can't help it, and the result isn't pleasant. I've been doing so lately. I don't overestimate myself in the least, Elice girl. Practically, commercially, I'm a zero. I'm simply not built that way. If I'm ever of any use in the world, ever amount to anything whatever, it will be in an impractical, artistic way. Whether I'll ever win out so--oh, for light, for light!...

Frankly, the new novel is going badly, Elice, cursedly bad!"

"I'm sorry, Steve. You know--"

"Yes, I know."

"I've believed always, and still believe--"

"Yes, I know that too."

"You've got it in you to win; I know it, and you know it. You've done good work already, lots of it, and--"

"Wade into him and lick him!" bitterly. "He's only three sizes larger than you are, and afraid--I know you can lick him. Wade in!"

The girl said nothing.

"Forgive me, Elice," with quick contrition. "That was nasty of me, I confess. But I'm sore to-day, raw. It's genius I suppose," sarcastically, "genius unappreciated."

Still the girl said nothing.

"If I could only get a ray of light, a lead, the flutter of a signal from outside the wall. But I keep hammering my head at it day after day, and it remains precisely as it was years ago when I began. It's maddening."

Yet the girl was silent, waiting silent.

"And, last of all, if I should eventually succeed, should break through into my own, as Darley Roberts says, even then--from any point of view it isn't a cheerful prospect."

"As Mr. Roberts says? What was that, Steve?"

"I referred to the reward, pecuniary reward. He figured it out in dollars and cents once when he wanted to bring me out of the clouds. Looking at it that way, there isn't much to the game even for the winners, Elice."

"Not much if you win? I can't believe it, Steve. I always supposed--"

"Everybody does. The public, the uninitiated, are long on supposing. Even the would-be's like myself delude themselves and build air castles until some hard-headed friend calls the turn. Then--no; there really isn't much in it, Elice; nothing in comparison to the plums in the business world.

That job of Graham's, for instance, offers greater possibilities than success even, and when it comes to partial success or failure! It's a joke, the artistic temperament in this commercial twentieth century, a tremendous side-splitting joke! One nowadays should be born with suckers on his fingers, such as a fly has on its feet, so that whenever he came into the vicinity of a bank note it would stick fast. That would be the ideal condition, the greatest natural blessing, now!"

"You know you don't mean that, Steve. It's hot and you're out of the mood to-day--that's all. To-morrow will be different; you'll see things straight again."

"Thank you, Elice. You're right, as usual. I said I was raw to-day. It's boyish to be so too, I realize that. But it's hard sometimes, deucedly hard, when others are doing something and getting somewhere to see yourself standing still. One gets to thinking and imagining things that probably don't exist." He took a long breath. "It's this thing of imagination that's worse than reality. It crawls in between everything so; and somehow you can't keep it out. It gives one a scare." He laughed shortly, ill at ease. "It even makes one doubt a little the people one believes in most: take you and me, for instance. In my sane moments I know nothing could get between us; but sometimes I get to imagining--times like the last few days when I am--raw--that we're gradually drifting apart. A little difference of opinion comes up and imagination magnifies until it becomes a mountain and--I know I'm preposterous, Elice, and there's nothing really to it, but the thing's been on my mind and I wanted to tell you and get it out of my system." He had hurried on, leading up to the point, making the situation deliberately. Now he turned to her, smiling frankly. "It's preposterous, isn't it, Elice? Tell me so. I like to hear you say it."

"Preposterous, Steve?" The girl returned the look, but for some reason, probably one she herself could not have told, she did not smile. She merely looked at him, steadily, unwaveringly. "I have never thought of the possibility before, never questioned. Certainly nothing has come between us. To imagine--I never imagine the unpleasant, Steve."

The figure in the hammock shifted restlessly, as though but half satisfied.

"And nothing ever will, Elice?" he pressed. "Say that just to please me.

I think an awful lot of you, girl; so much that at times I'm afraid."

This time the girl smiled, quietly, very quietly.

"And I of you, Steve," she echoed. "Must I protest that?"

"No," swiftly, "not for an instant. I don't doubt, mind.... It's all that cursed imagination of mine. I was only thinking of the future. If things shouldn't come my way, shouldn't--I put it at the worst possible--if by any chance I should remain a--failure such as I am now--you wouldn't mind--would overlook--it wouldn't make any difference at all with you and me, would it, Elice?"

"Steve, you mustn't say such things--mustn't, I say. It's morbid. I won't listen."

"But tell me," pa.s.sionately, "what I asked. I want to hear you say it. I want to know."

For an instant the girl was silent, an instant that seemed minutes to the expectant listener. For the second time she met him eye to eye.

"Whether or not you become famous as a writer," she said slowly, "won't make any difference in the least. It's you I care for, Steve; you as you are now and nothing more." The voice paused but the eyes did not shift.

"As for the future, Steve man, I can't promise nor can you. To do so would be to lie, and I won't lie. I say I love you; you as you are. If anything ever should come between us, should, I say--you suggested it and--persist--it will be because of a change in you yourself." For the second time she halted; then she smiled. "I think that's all there is to say," she completed.

"All!" With a buoyancy unfeigned the man swung out of the hammock upon his feet. "That's just the beginning. You're just getting under way, Elice."