"I did ask him, just now; and his answer was to tear the thing up." There was a long pause, during which the two opponents rested rather helplessly on their resentment. Halo was still too angry to speak, and her husband, she knew, was beginning to ask himself if he had made a mistake—if there were times when even the satisfaction of bullying someone who depended on one had better be foregone. He said sullenly: "After all, it only means the loss of the time it'll take him to rewrite the thing. I don't believe there were more than sixty pages."

"Creative writers can't rewrite themselves. It would be mental torture if they could … and they can't."

"Oh, well, we'll see."

"Do you mean to say he told you he'd try?"

"Lord, no. On the contrary. He said he'd never write another line for us… . But of course he will—he'll have to. He belongs to the review for another two years, as I reminded him."

Halo pondered. At length she said, in a quieter tone: "You can't make him write if he doesn't choose to."

"I can threaten him with a lawsuit."

"Oh, Lewis—"

"Well, what about it? Here's a fellow who's destroyed something beautiful—pricelessly beautiful. You tell me artists can't do the same thing twice over. Well, that makes it unique. And that unique thing that he's destroyed belonged to me—belonged to the New Hour, and to Dreck and Saltzer. As I told him, it was partly paid for already—and how's he going to make it up to us now, I ask you? I could see the young ass had never even thought of that."