m than an opinion or a
criticism. He was designed exactly by Nature for cynical observation,
and was intended to play no other part in life.

"Well, Christopher?" said Brun. "Hot, isn't it?"

"My word--yes. Breton's coming along presently."

"Good. I've asked Arkwright the explorer. Nice fellow." They sat in
silence for a little. Then Brun said:

"Interested in writers, Christopher?"

"Not very much. Why?"

"Just been lunching with a young novelist, Westcott. What he said
interested me. Of course, he's very young, got no humour, takes himself
dreadfully seriously, but he asked my advice--and it is as a sign of the
times over here that I mention it."

"Go ahead."

"He tells me that a number of young novelists are going to band
themselves into a kind of Artists' Young Liberty movement--artists,
poets, novelists, some thirty altogether--going to have a magazine, do
all kinds of things. Some of the older men will scoff. At the same
time----"

"Well?" said Christopher.

"They'd asked him to join. He wanted my opinion."

"What did you say?"

"He interested me--he was a kind of test case. It would mean that,
commercially, from the popular point of view, it would put him back for
years. Those young men will all be put down as conceited cranks. They
will tilt at the successful popular men like Lawson and the others, will
worship at the feet of the unsuccessful 'Great' men like Lester and
Cotton. The papers will hate 'em, the public will be indifferent. The
result will be that, in the end, they may do a big thing--at any rate
they'll have done a fine thing, but they'll all die on the way, I
expect."

Brun spoke with enthusiasm unusual for him.

"How was this a test of Westcott?" asked Christopher.

"Well--would he go or no? He's at the kind of parting of the ways. I
believe success is coming to him, if he wants it; but he'll have to
build another wall in front of his Tiger either before the success or
after. If he joins this crowd of men, there'll be no walls for him ever
again."

Christopher knew that when Brun had some idea that he was pleasantly
pursuing and had secured an audience nothing would stay or hinder him.

He pushed a chair towards him.

"What do you mean by your Tiger?" he asked.

"My Tiger is what every man has within him--I don't mean, you know, a
nasty habit or a degrading passion or anything of necessity
vicious--only my theory is that every man is given at the outset of life
a Beast i