writing of a novel which was to be
an entire departure from the Euphemia tradition. The more he got on with
this, the more clearly he realized that it was essentially
insignificant. When he re-read what he had written he was surprised by
crudities where he had intended sincerities and rhetoric where the
scheme had demanded passion. What was the matter with him? He was
stirred that Lady Harman should send for him, and his inability to deal
with her perplexities deepened his realization of the ignorance and
superficiality he had so long masked even from himself beneath the
tricks and pretensions of a gay scepticism. He went away fully resolved
to grapple with the entire Hostel question, and he put the patched and
tortured manuscript of the new novel aside with a certain satisfaction
to do this.

The more he reflected upon the nature of this study he proposed for
himself the more it attracted him. It was some such reality as this he
had been wanting. He could presently doubt whether he would ever go back
to his novel-writing again, or at least to the sort of novel-writing he
had been doing hitherto. To invent stories to save middle-aged
prosperous middle-class people from the distresses of thinking, is
surely no work for a self-respecting man. Stevenson in the very deeps of
that dishonourable traffic had realized as much and likened himself to a
_fille de joie_, and Haggard, of the same school and period, had
abandoned blood and thunder at the climax of his success for the honest
study of agricultural conditions. The newer successes were turning out
work, less and less conventional and agreeable and more and more
stiffened with facts and sincerities.... He would show Lady Harman that
a certain debonair quality he had always affected, wasn't incompatible
with a powerful grasp of general conditions.... And she wanted this
done. Suppose he did it in a way that made him necessary to her. Suppose
he did it very well.

He set to work, and understanding as you do a certain quality of the
chameleon in Mr. Brumley's moral nature, you will understand that he
worked through a considerable variety of moods. Sometimes he worked with
disinterested passion and sometimes he was greatly sustained by this
thought that here was something that would weave him in with the
gravities of her life and give him perhaps a new inlet to intimacy. And
presently a third thing came to his help, and that was the discovery
that the questions arising out