"Not my books," I amended, "but my one book, which is the Biography, and of which my various publications are chapters."
Charteris shrugged. "My dear fellow! I, in common with the remainder of mankind, refuse to admit the possibility of anybody's writing a book in nineteen volumes. It simply is not done."
"But," he was told, with stubborn modesty, "but I have done it. Anyhow, fifteen volumes—"
"Oh, no: you have merely written fifteen books. That is a quite different affair, which anyone could manage, given pen and ink and time and a sufficient lack of consideration for one's fellows. The connection of these various books, I can assure you, is either forced or imagined: otherwise, they would be an affront to the rest of us."
"Of course," I conceded, a bit mollified, "of course, if you are putting the Biography upon a basis with Sir Thomas Browne's Relations Whose Truth We Fear—"
"I am putting, to the contrary, the author of the Biography," said Charteris, "into a phrase."
"And that phrase is—?"
Charteris grinned. "The author of Jurgen."
"I begin already," I commented, "to dislike that phrase—"
"Nevertheless, you need never look to find yourself regarded as anything save the author of Jurgen and, just incidentally, of some other books. There, after all, my friend, the Tumble-bug has scored: and nobody, for the rest of your lifetime, will you ever hear speak of those other books except, more or less politely, to find fault with their likeness or their unlikeness to Jurgen. Either quality, as you perhaps have learned already, is equally to be deplored and shrugged over."