can. A
scheme for the next canvas occurred to me last night, but I want you to
help me execute it. What about the manuscripts? If you can't come, tell
me. Bring Nous. LUCIA."

I smiled as I replaced the letter. The composition was rather
defective, and left the meaning decidedly indistinct. If I could not
come I was to tell her. Tell her what? About the MS., or that I
couldn't come?

And under what circumstances was I to take Nous? Apparently if I could
not do so.

I was not sneering at the little note, and it went into my breast
pocket, but it amused me.

"That is the way I ought to write for the British, I suppose?" I
muttered, with a yawn. "Muddle all one's language up until nobody has
the faintest idea of what the author's sentiments are, and then they
don't know whether he means anything heterodox or not."

I got up. I might as well obey the orders I had just received.

There was a tired confusion of thought in my brain--a floating mass of
half-formed embryonic ideas, wishes, plans and suggestions filled it
that were quite useless for prompting or guiding any definite
resolution as to what I should do in the immediate future.

Everything seemed to depend on something else, and it was impossible to
find any positive basis upon which I could found a resolve.

If I could succeed as an author, my way was clear, but if I could not,
and if ... and if... And so on through a wearying, perplexing series of
conditions.

Just then I felt unequal to regulating and giving order to this inward
chaos, and I abandoned the attempt.

Meanwhile I would go over to the house in South Kensington, whence the
letter had come.

It was about eleven when I arrived there, and I was told Miss Grant was
"upstairs, as usual."

I nodded, and went up the necessary six flights of stairs to a familiar
landing on the third floor.

A door in front of me stood ajar, and with a sign to Nous to remain on
the stairs, I knocked at it.

There was no answer and no sound from within, and thinking the room was
empty after all, I pushed the door wide and went in.

It was a huge room, used as a studio, facing the north light, and with
three large windows.

Before the middle one there was an easel, and the girl was in the room,
standing there in front of the canvas between me and the light. She was
seemingly entirely abstracted and absorbed. She was completely
motionless, and for the moment she communicated her stillness to me.

I paused,