Lagrange?"
"Working! Me? I don't _work_ anywhere. I am a literary scavenger. I haunt
the intellectual slaughter pens, and live by the putrid offal that
self-respecting writers reject. I glean the stinking materials for my
stories from the sewers and cesspools of life. For the dollars they pay, I
furnish my readers with those thrills that public decency forbids them to
experience at first hand. I am a procurer for the purposes of mental
prostitution. My books breed moral pestilence and spiritual disease. The
unholy filth I write fouls the minds and pollutes the imaginations of my
readers. I am an instigator of degrading immorality and unmentionable
crimes. _Work_! No, young man, I don't work. Just now, I'm doing penance
in this damned town. My rotten imaginings have proven too much--even for
me--and the doctors sent me West to recuperate,"
The artist could find no words that would answer. In silence, the two men
turned away from the mountains, and started back along the avenue by which
they had come.
When they had walked some little distance, the young man said, "This is
your first visit to Fairlands, Mr. Lagrange?"
"I was here last year"--answered the other--"here and in the hills yonder.
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