m an acutely self-conscious man at all times. The gesture
struck me as absolutely novel for me. I repeated it, for my own
satisfaction. "Odd!" Then (rather puzzled) I turned to my portmanteau.

After shaving, my mind reverted to the acting I had seen, and I
entertained myself before the cheval glass with some imitations of
Jafferay's more exaggerated gestures. "Really, one might think it a
disease," I said--"Stage-Walkitis!" (There's many a truth spoken in jest.)
Then, if I remember rightly, I went off to see Wembly, and afterwards
lunched at the British Museum with Delia. We actually spoke about our
prospects, in the light of my new appointment.

But that appointment was the beginning of my downfall. From that day I
necessarily became a persistent theatre-goer, and almost insensibly I
began to change. The next thing I noticed after the gesture about the
razor was to catch myself bowing ineffably when I met Delia, and stooping
in an old-fashioned, courtly way over her hand. Directly I caught myself,
I straightened myself up and became very uncomfortable. I remember she
looked at me curiously. Then, in the office, I found myself doing "nervous
business," fingers on teeth, when Barnaby asked me a question I could not
very well answer. Then, in some trifling difference with Delia, I clasped
my hand to my brow. And I pranced through my social transactions at times
singularly like an actor! I tried not to--no one could be more keenly
alive to the arrant absurdity of the histrionic bearing. And I did!

It began to dawn on me what it all meant. The acting, I saw, was too much
for my delicately-strung nervous system. I have always, I know, been too
amenable to the suggestions of my circumstances. Night after night of
concentrated attention to the conventional attitudes and intonation of the
English stage was gradually affecting my speech and carriage. I was giving
way to the infection of sympathetic imitation. Night after night my
plastic nervous system took the print of some new amazing gesture, some
new emotional exaggeration--and retained it. A kind of theatrical veneer
threatened to plate over and obliterate my private individuality
altogether. I saw myself in a kind of vision. Sitting by myself one night,
my new self seemed to me to glide, posing and gesticulating, across the
room. He clutched his throat, he opened his fingers, he opened his legs in
walking like a high-class marionette. He went from attitude to attitude.