as an impertinence. Forgive me!' He took up the book he had
given her. 'This fellow Mann is like all the rest. He wants to
substitute a static show for a dynamic and vital performance, to impose
his own art upon the theatre. The actors have done that until they
have driven anything else out. He wants to drive them out. That is
all, but he has great gifts....'

'Please don't talk about other people,' said Clara. 'I want to hear
about you. What were you doing in the book-shop?'

He told her then why he went to the Charing Cross Road, to find a
holiday which would make life tolerable; she described her holiday
touring through the country with the glorious conclusion in the Lakes.
He looked rather gloomy and shook his head,--

'That wouldn't suit me. I like to go slowly and to linger over the
things that please me, to drink in their real character. It is
pleasant to move swiftly, but all this motor-car business seems to me
to be only another dodge--running away from life.... I ought to do it
if I were true to my temperament, but I love my job too much. I'm an
intellectual, but I can't stand by and look on, and I can't run away.'

Clara had never met any one like him before. There was such acute
misery in his face, and his words seemed only to be a cloud thrown up
to disguise the retreat he was visibly making from her. She would not
have that. She was sure of him. This attitude of his was a challenge
to her. The force with which he spoke had made Charles and even
herself seem flimsy and fantastic, and she wanted to prove that she was
or could be made as solid, as definite and precise as himself.

She knew what it was to be driven by her own will. Her sympathy was
with him there. He was driven to the point of exhaustion.

'I've been trying to create the woman of the future,' he said.
'Ibsen's women are all nerves. What I want to get is the woman who can
detach herself from her emotional experience and accept failure, as a
man does, with a belief that in the long run the human mind is stronger
than Nature. If instincts are baffled, they are not to be trusted.
Women have yet to learn that.... When they learn it, we can begin to
get straight.'

It did not seem to matter whether she understood him or not. He had
her sympathy, and he was glad to talk.

'That seems to be the heart of the problem. But it is a little
disconcerting, when you have been trying to create a woman, to walk
into a bookshop