I want to ask you, Miss Green, where you got the character of your central figure--the Octopus, as you call him--John Broderick ?" "From imagination--of course," answered Shirley.
Ryder opened the book, and Shirley noticed that there were several passages marked.

He turned the leaves over in silence for a minute or two and then he said: "You've sketched a pretty big man here--" "Yes," assented Shirley, "he has big possibilities, but I think he makes very small use of them." Ryder appeared not to notice her commentary, and, still reading the book, he continued: "On page 22 you call him '_the world's greatest individualized potentiality, a giant combination of materiality, mentality and money--the greatest exemplar of individual human will in existence to-day._' And you make indomitable will and energy the keystone of his marvellous success.

Am I right ?" He looked at her questioningly.
"Quite right," answered Shirley.
Ryder proceeded: "On page 26 you say '_the machinery of his money-making mind typifies the laws of perpetual unrest.

It must go on, relentlessly, resistlessly, ruthlessly making money--making money and continuing to make money.

It cannot stop until the machinery crumbles._'" Laying the book down and turning sharply on Shirley, he asked her bluntly: "Do you mean to say that I couldn't stop to-morrow if I wanted to ?" She affected to not understand him.
"_You ?_" she inquired in a tone of surprise.
"Well--it's a natural question," stammered Ryder, with a nervous little laugh; "every man sees himself in the hero of a novel just as every woman sees herself in the heroine.