He brought his stick of charcoal to a very fine edge and set to work carefully.  In a moment he stopped and, with his chamois cloth, dusted out what he had drawn.  He had made a false start, he began but could not recall how the lines should run, his fingers were willing enough; in his imagination he saw just how the outlines should be, but somehow he could not make his hand interpret what was in his head.  Some third medium through which the one used to act upon the other was sluggish, dull; worse than that, it seemed to be absent. "Well," he muttered, “can’t I make this come out right?” Then he tried more carefully.  His imagination saw the picture clearer, his hand moved with more assurance, but the two seemed to act independently of each other.  The forms he made on the canvas were no adequate reflection of those in his brain; some third delicate and subtle faculty that coordinated the other two and that called forth a sure and instant response to the dictates of his mind, was lacking.  The lines on his canvas were those of a child just learning to draw; one saw for what they were intended, but they were crude, they had no life, no meaning.  The very thing that would have made them intelligible, interpretive, that would have made them art, was absent.  A third, a fourth, and a fifth time Vandover made the attempt.  It was useless.  He knew that it was not because his hand lacked cunning on account of long disuse; such a thing, in spite of popular belief, never happened to artists—­a good artist might abandon his work for five years, ten years—­and take it up again precisely where he had laid it down with no loss of technical skill.  No, this thing seemed more subtle, so subtle that at first he could hardly grasp it.  But suddenly a great fear came upon him, a momentary return of that wild hysterical terror from which he believed he had forever escaped.

“Is it gone?” he cried out.  “Is it gone from me?  My art?  Steady,” he went on, passing his hand over his face with a reassuring smile; “steady, old man, this won’t do, again—­and so soon!  It won’t do for you to get scared twice like that.  This is just nervousness, you are overexcited.  Pshaw!  What’s the matter with me?  Let’s get to work.”

Still another time he dusted out what he had done and recommenced, concentrating all his attention with a tremendous effort of the will.  Grotesque and meaningless shapes, the mocking caricatures of those he saw in his fancy, grew under his charcoal, while slowly, slowly, a queer, numb feeling came in his head, like a rising fog, and the touch of that unreasoning terror returned, this time stronger, more persistent, more tenacious than before.

Vandover nerved himself against it, not daring to give in, fearing to allow himself to see what this really meant.  He passed one hand over his cheek and along the side of his head, the fingers dancing.  “Hum!” he muttered, looking vaguely about him, “this is bad.  I mustn’t let this get the better of me now.  I’ll knock off for to-day, take a little rest, begin again to-morrow.”