of
her good faith and as proof of her respectability.
    Editors and publishers contributed to the daily heap of letters, the former
on their knees for his manuscripts, the latter on their knees for his books -
his poor disdained manuscripts that had kept all he possessed in pawn for so
many dreary months in order to find them in postage. There were unexpected
checks for English serial rights and for advance payments on foreign
translations. His English agent announced the sale of German translation rights
in three of his books, and informed him that Swedish editions, from which he
could expect nothing because Sweden was not a party to the Berne Convention,
were already on the market. Then there was a nominal request for his permission
for a Russian translation, that country being likewise outside the Berne
Convention.
    He turned to the huge bundle of clippings which had come in from his press
bureau, and read about himself and his vogue, which had become a furore. All his
creative output had been flung to the public in one magnificent sweep. That
seemed to account for it. He had taken the public off its feet, the way Kipling
had, that time when he lay near to death and all the mob, animated by a mob-mind
thought, began suddenly to read him. Martin remembered how that same world-mob,
having read him and acclaimed him and not understood him in the least, had,
abruptly, a few months later, flung itself upon him and torn him to pieces.
Martin grinned at the thought. Who was he that he should not be similarly
treated in a few more months? Well, he would fool the mob. He would be away, in
the South Seas, building his grass house, trading for pearls and copra, jumping
reefs in frail outriggers, catching sharks and bonitas, hunting wild goats among
the cliffs of the valley that lay next to the valley of Taiohæ.
    In the moment of that thought the desperateness of his situation dawned upon
him. He saw, cleared eyed, that he was in the Valley of the Shadow. All the life
that was in him was fading, fainting, making toward death. He realized how much
he slept, and how much he desired to sleep. Of old, he had hated sleep. It had
robbed him of precious moments of living. Four hours of sleep in the twenty-four
had meant being robbed of four hours of life. How he had grudged sleep! Now it
was life he grudged. Life was not good; its taste in his mouth was without tang,
and bitter. This was his peril.