"I never do."
"But this time—with such a beginning."
"Will you be my critic, Mistress Anne? Let me read to you now and then—like this?"
"I am afraid I should spoil you with praise. It all seems so—wonderful."
"You can't spoil me, and I like to be wonderful."
In spite of his egotism, she found herself modifying her first unfavorable estimate of him. His quick eager speech, his mobile mouth, his mop of dark hair, his white restless hands, his long-lashed near-sighted eyes, these contributed a personality which had in it nothing commonplace or conventional.
For three nights he read to her. On the fourth he had nothing to read. "It is the same old story," he burst out passionately. "I see mountain peaks, then, suddenly, darkness falls and my brain is blank."
"Wait a little," she told him; "it will come back."
"But it never comes back. All of my good beginnings flat out toward the end. And that's why I'm pot-boiling, because," bitterly, "I am not big enough for anything else."
"You mustn't say such things. We achieve only as we believe in ourselves. Don't you know that? If you believe that things are going to end badly, they will end badly."
