She shivered, though the room was warm. Assuredly, she told herself, she must keep burning before her mental vision the memory that, however much Stuart had been the victim of a mistake at the time of their parting, he had since forfeited all claims upon her love.
Stuart Farquaharson, the writer of best sellers, reflected that Life does not divide its chapters by the measure of the calendar, nor does it observe that rule of literary craftsmanship which seeks to distribute the drama of a narrative into a structural unity of form with the ascending stages of climax.
At this bruised cynicism an older man would have smiled, but to Stuart it was poignantly real.
He had lost the prize which to him seemed the only guerdon worth striving for, while every other recognition had come easily—almost without effort.
The success of his novel had been so extraordinary that Farquaharson fell to reviewing his literary experience with a somewhat impersonal amusement. He had not poured his soul into his work with a bitter sweat of midnight endeavor as the genius is said to do. He had wooed the muse about as reverently as a battered tramp might fondle an equally battered dog, seeking, without illusion, a substitute for better companionship.
One afternoon he sat alone in a Yokohama tea-house, reading the latest collection of newspaper reviews which had come to his hand.
"We have here a book," observed one commentator, "which irritates with a sense of undeveloped power while it delights with a too-facile charm. It would seem to come from a pen more gifted than sincere."
As Stuart slipped the collection of clippings into his pocket a hand fell on his shoulder and he rose to encounter a ruddy-faced young man in the undress uniform of the United States Navy.
"Why so solitary?" demanded the newcomer. "Surely a famous novelist needn't sit alone in the shadow of Fuji Yama. The place teems with charming Americans."