The editorial appeared just as Howard wrote it. He read and reread it,
admiring the large, handsome editorial type in which it was printed, and
deciding that it was worthy of the excellent place in the column which Mr.
Malcolm had given it. He wrote another that very day and sent it up by the
boy. He found it in his desk the next noon with "Too abstract--never forget
that you are writing for a newspaper" scrawled across the last page in blue
pencil.

In the two following months Howard submitted thirty-five articles. Three
were published in the main as he wrote them, six were "cut" to paragraphs,
one appeared as a letter to the editor with "H" signed to it. The others
disappeared. It was not encouraging, but Howard kept on. He knew that if he
stopped marching steadily, even though hopelessly, toward a definite goal,
a heavy hand would be laid upon his shoulder to drag him away and fling him
down upon a grave.

As it was, desperately though he fought to refrain from backward glances,
he was now and again taken off his guard. A few of her pencil marks on the
margin of a leaf in one of his books; a gesture, a little mannerism of some
woman passing him in the street--and he would be ready to sink down with
weariness and loneliness, like a tired traveller in a vast desert.

He completely lost self-control only once. It was a cold, wet May night and
everything had gone against him that day. He looked drearily round his
rooms as he came in. How stiff, how forbidding, how desert they seemed! He
threw himself into a big chair.

"No friends," he thought, "no one that cares a rap whether I live or die,
suffer or am happy. Nothing to care for. Why do I go on? What's the use if
one has not an object--a human object?"