week. I made up my
mind to abandon the writing of novels for the rest of my life. I did not
know that this was something out of my control and that when the urge to
write a novel seized me, I should be able to do nothing but submit. Five
years later, the urge came and, refusing to write any more plays for the
time, I started upon the longest of all my novels. I called it _Of Human
Bondage_.

The Magician

I

Arthur Burdon and Dr Porhoet walked in silence. They had lunched at a
restaurant in the Boulevard Saint Michel, and were sauntering now in the
gardens of the Luxembourg. Dr Porhoet walked with stooping shoulders, his
hands behind him. He beheld the scene with the eyes of the many painters
who have sought by means of the most charming garden in Paris to express
their sense of beauty. The grass was scattered with the fallen leaves,
but their wan decay little served to give a touch of nature to the
artifice of all besides. The trees were neatly surrounded by bushes,
and the bushes by trim beds of flowers. But the trees grew without
abandonment, as though conscious of the decorative scheme they helped to
form. It was autumn, and some were leafless already. Many of the flowers
were withered. The formal garden reminded one of a light woman, no longer
young, who sought, with faded finery, with powder and paint, to make a
brave show of despair. It had those false, difficult smiles of uneasy
gaiety, and the pitiful graces which attempt a fascination that the
hurrying years have rendered vain.

Dr Porhoet drew more closely round his fragile body the heavy cloak which
even in summer he could not persuade himself to discard. The best part of
his life had been spent in Egypt, in the practice of medicine, and the
frigid summers of Europe scarcely warmed his blood. His memory flashed
for an instant upon those multi-coloured streets of Alexandria; and then,
like a homing bird, it flew to the green woods and the storm-beaten
coasts of his native Brittany. His brown eyes were veiled with sudden
melancholy.

'Let us wait here for a moment,' he said.

They took two straw-bottomed chairs and sat near the octagonal water
which completes with its fountain of Cupids the enchanting artificiality
of the Luxembourg. The sun shone more kindly now, and the trees which
framed the scene were golden and lovely. A balustrade of stone gracefully
enclosed the space, and the flowers, freshly bedded, were very gay. In
one corner