Physical force I had found to be unavailing. She was too cunning to
stumble into any of the pitfalls that with all my imagination I could
conjure up to embarrass her; but something had to be done, and I now
resolved upon a course of moral suasion, and wholly for Harley's
sake. The man was actually suffering because she had so persistently
defied him, and his discomfiture was all the more deplorable because
it meant little short of the ruin of his life and ambitions. The
problem had to be solved or his career was at an end. Harley never
could do two things at once. The task he had in hand always absorbed
his whole being until he was able to write the word finis on the last
page of his manuscript, and until the finis to this elusive book he
was now struggling with was written, I knew that he would write no
other. His pot-boilers he could do, of course, and so earn a living,
but pot-boilers destroy rather than make reputations, and Harley was
too young a man to rest upon past achievements; neither had he done
such vastly superior work that his fame could withstand much
diminution by the continuous production of ephemera.
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