"Not very much. Why?"
"Just been lunching with a young novelist, Westcott. What he said interested me. Of course, he's very young, got no humour, takes himself dreadfully seriously, but he asked my advice—and it is as a sign of the times over here that I mention it."
"Go ahead."
"He tells me that a number of young novelists are going to band themselves into a kind of Artists' Young Liberty movement—artists, poets, novelists, some thirty altogether—going to have a magazine, do all kinds of things. Some of the older men will scoff. At the same time——"
"Well?" said Christopher.
"They'd asked him to join. He wanted my opinion."
"What did you say?"
"He interested me—he was a kind of test case. It would mean that, commercially, from the popular point of view, it would put him back for years. Those young men will all be put down as conceited cranks. They will tilt at the successful popular men like Lawson and the others, will worship at the feet of the unsuccessful 'Great' men like Lester and Cotton. The papers will hate 'em, the public will be indifferent. The result will be that, in the end, they may do a big thing—at any rate they'll have done a fine thing, but they'll all die on the way, I expect."
Brun spoke with enthusiasm unusual for him.
"How was this a test of Westcott?" asked Christopher.