manuscript. It was his own work. Is it necessary to hint that
it was a tale essentially romantic in character?

He flung it into the grate and set fire to it. It represented
the labor of two years, but as he watched it burn, stirring the
sheets now and then so the flames would catch them more readily,
he smiled, unvisited by even the most shadowy second thought of
regret.

For why the deuce should a man with $500,000 in his pocket write
romances? Why should anyone write anything who is free to live?
For the first time in his existence Cleggett was free.

He picked up a sword. It was one of his favorite rapiers.
Sometimes people came out of the books--sometimes shadowy forms
came back to claim the weapons that had been theirs--and Cleggett
fought them. There was not an unscarred piece of furniture in
the place. He bent the flexible blade in his hands, tried the
point of it, formally saluted, brought the weapon to parade,
dallied with his imaginary opponent's sword for an instant. . . .

It seemed as if one of those terrible, but brilliant, duels, with
which that room was so familiar, was about to be enacted. . . .
But he laid the rapier down. After all, the rapier is scarcely a
thing of this century. Cleggett, for the first time, felt a
little impatient with the rapier. It is all very well to DREAM
with a rapier. But now, he was free; reality was before him; the
world of actual adventure called. He had but to choose!

He considered. He tried to look into that bright, adventurous