“Slaves to our own necessities; to other people’s demands; to burdens we have assumed, or have had thrust upon us, which we haven’t the courage to shake off.  To our own moods and passions.  To something within us that keeps us pursuing this thing we call happiness.  To struggle for fulfilment of ideals that can never be attained.  Slaves to our environment, to social forces before which the individual is nothing.  It’s all rot to talk about the free man, the man whose soul is his own.  Complete freedom isn’t even desirable, because to attain it you would have to withdraw yourself altogether from your fellows and become a law unto yourself in some remote solitude; and no sane person wants to do that, even to secure this mythical freedom which people prattle about and would recoil from if it were offered them.  Yes, I’ll have another cup, if you please, Mrs. Hollister.”

Lawanne munched cake and drank tea and talked as if he had been denied the boon of conversation for a long time.  But that could hardly be, for he had been across the continent since he left there.  He had been in New York and Washington and swung back to British Columbia by way of San Francisco.

“I read those two books of yours—­or rather Bob read them to me,” Doris said presently.  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for writing such a preposterous yarn as ’The Worm’.”

“Ah, my dear woman,” Lawanne’s face lit up with a sardonic smile.  “I wish my publishers could hear you say that.  ‘The Worm’ is good, sound, trade union goods, turned out in the very best manner of a thriving school of fictionsmiths.  It sold thirty thousand copies in the regular edition and tons in the reprint.”

“But there never were such invincible men and such a perfect creature of a woman,” Doris persisted.  “And the things they did—­the strings you pulled.  Life isn’t like that.  You know it isn’t.”

“Granted,” Lawanne returned dryly.  “But what did you think of ’The Man Who Couldn’t Die’?”

“It didn’t seem to me,” Doris said slowly, “that the man who wrote the last book could possibly have written the first.  That was life.  Your man there was a real man, and you made his hopes and fears, his love and sufferings, very vivid.  Your woman was real enough too, but I didn’t like her.  It didn’t seem to me she was worth the pain she caused.”

“Neither did she seem so to Phillips, if you remember,” Lawanne said.  “That was his tragedy—­to know his folly and still be urged blindly on because of her, because of his own illusions, which he knew he must cling to or perish.  But wait till I finish the book I’m going to write this winter.  I’m going to cut loose.  I’m going to smite the Philistines—­and the chances are,” he smiled cynically, “they won’t even be aware of the blow.  Did you read those books?” He turned abruptly to Myra.

She nodded.

“Yes, but I refuse to commit myself,” she said lightly.  “There is no such thing as a modest author, and Mrs. Hollister has given you all the praise that’s good for you.”