"Oh, many thousand miles from here! But we won't talk about it. They are well and happy. And this one"—here he took down the photograph of the man in full uniform—"is the Grand Duke Vladimir. Yes, a soldierly-looking man—none of the others are like him. But come now, tell me of yourself—you have some one at home, too?"
I nodded my head and mentioned my mother and the others at home.
"No sweetheart yet? No?—You needn't answer—we all have sweethearts at your age—at mine it is all over. But why did you leave her? It is so hard to do that. Ah, yes, I see—to make your bread. And how do you do it?"
"I write."
He lowered his brows and looked at me under his lids.
"What sort of writing? Books? What is called a novel?"
"No—not yet. I work on special articles for the newspapers, and now and then I get a short story or an essay into one of the magazines."
He was replacing the pictures as I talked, his back to me. He turned suddenly and again sought my eye.
"Don't waste your time on essays or statistics. You will not succeed as a machine. You have imagination, which is a real gift. You also dream, which is another way of saying that you can invent. If you can add construction to your invention, you will come quite close to what they call genius. I saw all this in your face to-night; that is why I wanted to talk to you. So many young men go astray for want of a word dropped into their minds at the right time. As for me, all I know is statistics, and so I will never be a genius." And a light laugh broke from his lips. "Worse luck, too. I must exchange them for money. Look at this—I have been all day correcting the proofs."
With this he walked to his table—he had not yet taken a seat, although a chair was next to my own—and laid in my lap a roll of galley-proofs.