IX


It seemed, indeed, as if work was to Ernest what the sting of pleasure
is to the average human animal. The inter-play of his mental forces gave
him the sensuous satisfaction of a woman's embrace. His eyes sparkled.
His muscle tightened. The joy of creation was upon him.

Often very material reasons, like stone weights tied to the wings of a
bird, stayed the flight of his imagination. Magazines were waiting for
his copy, and he was not in the position to let them wait. They supplied
his bread and butter.

Between the bread and butter, however, the play was growing scene by
scene. In the lone hours of the night he spun upon the loom of his fancy
a brilliant weft of swift desire--heavy, perfumed, Oriental--interwoven
with bits of gruesome tenderness. The thread of his own life intertwined
with the thread of the story. All genuine art is autobiography. It is
not, however, necessarily a revelation of the artist's actual self, but
of a myriad of potential selves. Ah, our own potential selves! They are
sometimes beautiful, often horrible, and always fascinating. They loom
to heavens none too high for our reach; they stray to yawning hells
beneath our very feet.

The man who encompasses heaven and hell is a perfect man. But there are
many heavens and more hells. The artist snatches fire from both. Surely
the assassin feels no more intensely the lust of murder than the poet
who depicts it in glowing words. The things he writes are as real to him
as the things that he lives. But in his realm the poet is supreme. His