iends who, as kindly as
possible, pointed out that the book was both thin and egotistical.
Hugh felt as if he could never write again, and as if the chief
occupation of his life would be gone; but with renewed health his
confidence returned, and in a few weeks he was able to look the
situation in the face. The reception of the book had brought home to
him the direction in which he was drifting. He saw that a certain
toughness and hardness of fibre had been wanting. He saw that he had
tried to fill a book up out of his own mind, in a leisurely and
trifling mood. He had not attempted to grasp his subjects, but had
allowed himself to put down loose and half-hearted impressions, instead
of trying to see into the essence of the things he was describing.

But, his illness over, he was astonished to find how little both money
anxieties and the shattering of literary hopes distressed him. For the
first, it was clear that his mother and sister could live with an
adequate degree of comfort and dignity. And as for his literary hopes,
he realised that the failure had been a real revelation of his own
weakness; but he realised too that other people would forget about the
book still faster than he himself, and that no previous failures would
damn a further work, if only it possessed the true qualities of art;
and indeed from this time he dated a real increase of artistic faculty,
a sense of constraining vocation, a joy in literary labour, which soon,
like a sunrise, brightened all his horizon; and it was pleasant too,
though Hugh did not overvalue it, to find his work beginning to bring
him a definite, though slight reputation, and a position among
imaginative critics.

Moreover his new home began to have a very potent charm for him. His
mother had settled in a small ancient house in the depths of the
country. They had very few neighbours. The little building itself was
full of charm, the charm of mellow beauty and old human ownership; it
was embosomed among trees, and had a small walled garden, rich in
flowers and shade. He had been there but a few weeks, when he realised
that the old feeling of a vague friendliness and intimate concern with
nature had come back. It was as though the spirits, which had peopled
the remembered flowers and trees of his first home, had flitted with
them, and had taken up their abode in this other garden. The flowers
seemed to smile at him with the same shy mystery, the trees to surround
th