now, just as my style is taking form,
crystallizing, would be to commit literary suicide. As it is, every storiette,
every word of every storiette, was a violation of myself, of my self-respect, of
my respect for beauty. I tell you it was sickening. I was guilty of sin. And I
was secretly glad when the markets failed, even if my clothes did go into pawn.
But the joy of writing the Love-cycle! The creative joy in its noblest form!
That was compensation for everything.«
    Martin did not know that Ruth was unsympathetic concerning the creative joy.
She used the phrase - it was on her lips he had first heard it. She had read
about it, studied about it, in the university in the course of earning her
Bachelorship of Arts; but she was not original, not creative, and all
manifestations of culture on her part were but harpings of the harpings of
others.
    »May not the editor have been right in his revision of your Sea Lyrics?« she
questioned. »Remember, an editor must have proved qualifications or else he
would not be an editor.«
    »That's in line with the persistence of the established,« he rejoined, his
heat against the editor-folk getting the better of him. »What is, is not only
right, but is the best possible. The existence of anything is sufficient
vindication of its fitness to exist - to exist, mark you, as the average person
unconsciously believes, not merely in present conditions, but in all conditions.
It is their ignorance, of course, that makes them believe such rot - their
ignorance, which is nothing more nor less than the henidical mental process
described by Weininger. They think they think, and such thinkless creatures are
the arbiters of the lives of the few who really think.«
    He paused, overcome by the consciousness that he had been talking over
Ruth's head.
    »I'm sure I don't know who this Weininger is,« she retorted. »And you are so
dreadfully general that I fail to follow you. What I was speaking of was the
qualification of editors -«
    »And I'll tell you,« he interrupted. »The chief qualification of ninety-nine
per cent of all editors is failure. They have failed as writers. Don't think
they prefer the drudgery of the desk and the slavery to their circulation and to
the business manager to the joy of writing. They have tried to write, and they
have failed. And right