The sub-editor very nearly threw it contemptuously back.

Instead he glanced at it, frowned, read a little more, and went on reading.

When he had finished, he looked at this strange, thin young man with the pallid cheeks and deep-set eyes, in something like awe.
"You wrote this yourself ?" he asked.
"Certainly, sir," Burton answered.

"If it is really worth putting in your paper and paying for, you can have plenty more." "But why did you write it ?" the editor persisted.

"Where did you get the idea from ?" Burton looked at him in mild-eyed wonder.
"It is just what I see as I pass along," he explained.
The sub-editor was an ambitious literary man himself and he looked steadfastly away from his visitor, out of the window, his eyes full of regret, his teeth clenched almost in anger.