"You see, old man," he began, one morning about six months after the wedding, "we've discovered, Clara and I, that the least we can live on in New York is fifty dollahs a week. And you see I'm only getting forty. It's serious, isn't it? But Clara says that if we buy all ouah canned goods at Lacy's—-"
Maxwell stopped him with a gesture of desperation.
"Harrington, if you say another word I shall go crazy," he announced, with the calmness of despair. "We'll give you fifty dollars a week. Now consider that settled, and for God's sake get your mind off it. If you don't look out you'll be writing about coal and canned goods in your Mars column. What are you going to write this week, anyhow?" he demanded, with sudden suspicion.
Harrington looked guilty.
"I thought I'd say something about how prices have advanced," he faltered. "Clara says that two yeahs ago—" But Maxwell had taken him by the shoulders.
"No, you don't!" he shouted, fiercely. "You'll keep on writing about literature and life and lily-pads and love—that's what you'll do. If you don't, you'll lose your job. Don't you dare to introduce a single-dollar sign or canned tomato into those columns," he added, warningly, as he returned to his work.
Harrington's look of reproach as he went out haunted him for days—so long, in fact, that he bore with extraordinary patience a confidence that gentleman favored him with several months later. He came to the office one morning wearing an expression oddly combined of pride and shame, in which first one and then the other predominated. For a long time he discussed apartments and janitors and domestic supplies, and Maxwell humored him. Then he said:
"I've been an awful ass, Maxwell, but that's no reason why I should keep on being one, is it? I've got to tell you something impo'tant, and I'm going to do it now. I can't write any more about literatuah of the past and lily-pads of the present, as you would say. Who ca'es about 'em? I don't. The wo'ld to-day is interested in the life of to-day. Men think about theah wo'k and theah incomes and theah homes and theah wives and theah children, and that's all they think about. And women think about men, and that's all they think about. And heah I'm writing all the time about literatuah—literatuah." He turned the word over in his mouth and ejected it with supreme contempt.
As once before, Maxwell was silent in the presence of simple truth. He rallied, however, and voiced a protest.
"I suppose you haven't lost interest in earning your living," he suggested, ironically. "How do you intend to do that if you give up this job?"