off the
servants on board wages. I need a holiday. I--I trust this will not be
inconvenient to you?"

"I thank you, sir; not in the least." He coughed, and I bent my head,
some instinct forewarning me.

"I shall be away for three months at least," I put in quickly.
(Five minutes before I had not dreamed of leaving home.)

But the stroke was not to be averted. For months it had been preparing.

"As for inconvenience, sir--if I may remind you--the course of Trewlove
never did--"

"For three months at least," I repeated, rapping sharply on the table.

Next day I crossed the Channel and found myself at Ambleteuse.

II.

I chose Ambleteuse because it was there that I had written the greater
part of _Larks in Aspic_. I went again to my old quarters at Madame
Peyron's. As before, I eschewed company, excursions, all forms of violent
exercise. I bathed, ate, drank, slept, rambled along the sands, or lay on
my back and stared at the sky, smoking and inviting my soul. In short, I
reproduced all the old conditions. But in vain! At Ambleteuse, no less
than in London, the Muse either retreated before my advances, or, when I
sat still and waited, kept her distance, declining to be coaxed.

Matters were really growing serious. Three weeks had drifted by with not
a line and scarcely an idea to show for them; and the morning's post had
brought me a letter from Cozens, of the Duke of Cornwall's, begging for
(at least) a scenario of the new piece. My play (he said) would easily
last this season out; but he must reopen in the autumn with a new one,
and--in short, weren't we beginning to run some risk?

I groaned, crushed the letter into my pocket, and by an effort of will put
the tormenting question from me until after my morning bath. But now the
time was come to face it. I began weakly by asking myself why the
dickens I--with enough for my needs--had bound myself to write this
thing within a given time, at the risk of turning out inferior work.
For that matter, why should I write a comedy at all if I didn't want to?
These were reasonable questions, and yet they missed the point.
The point was that I had given my promise to Cozens, and that Cozens
depended on it. Useless to ask now why I had given it! At the time I
could have promised cheerfully to write him three plays within as many
months.

So full my head was then, and so empty now! A grotesque and dreadful
suspicion took me. While Trewlove tortured