He nodded with a smiling air.
“Well I have arrived almost at the end of my work and I have come to the conclusion that the book is not Me,—it is not a reflex of my feelings at all,—and I cannot understand how I came to write it.”
“You find it stupid perhaps?” said Lucio sympathetically.
“No,” I answered with a touch of indignation—“I do not find it stupid.”
“Dull then?”
“No,—it is not dull.”
“Melodramatic?”
“No,—not melodramatic.”
“Well, my good fellow, if it is not dull or stupid or melodramatic, what is it!” he exclaimed merrily—“It must be something!”
[p 76]
“Yes,—it is this,—it is beyond me altogether.” And I spoke with some bitterness. “Quite beyond me. I could not write it now,—I wonder I could write it then. Lucio, I daresay I am talking foolishly,—but it seems to me I must have been on some higher altitude of thought when I wrote the book,—a height from which I have since fallen.”