"Well, you must wait. Why, damn it all, man!"—he stopped to drink, and Richard noticed how his hand shook. "How long have you been working seriously? Not a year! If you were going in for painting, you surely wouldn't expect to sell pictures after only a year's study?" Mr. Aked showed a naïve appreciation of himself in the part of a veteran who deigns to give a raw recruit the benefit of vast experience.
"Of course not," assented Richard, abashed.
"Well, then, don't begin to whine."
After the cheese Mr. Aked ordered coffee and cognac, and sixpenny cigars. They smoked in silence.
"Do you know," Richard blurted out at length, "the fact is I'm not sure that I'm meant for writing at all. I never take any pleasure in writing. It's a confounded nuisance." He almost trembled with apprehension as he uttered the words.
"You like thinking about what you're going to write, arranging, observing, etc.?"
"Yes, I like that awfully."
"Well, here's a secret. No writer does like writing, at least not one in a hundred, and the exception, ten to one, is a howling mediocrity. That's a fact. But all the same they're miserable if they don't write."
"I'm glad; there's hope."