He hesitated. "N—o," he said slowly. Then, quickening a little, "The fact is, George, a job like that would have to be rather specially approached. I mean unless you were at the very top of your form you'd be bound to come a cropper. No good starting a thing till you know your tools are sharp—in this case your faculties. I'm—I'm sharpening myself now, if you know what I mean."
At this point I became incautious. I ceased to listen to the voice that warned me too to be careful.
"Well, that's what I want to ask you," I said. "I want to know what you're doing here and why you left Cambridge Circus like that."
I was instantly sorry I had said it. Just as wrestlers on a mat lie locked, with little apparent movement, yet in the fiercest intensity of prolonged strain, so I felt that something struggled in him. I heard it in his voice, I saw it in the boyish grey-blue eyes that sought mine.
"Don't, please, old fellow," he pleaded anxiously. "If you mean the rot I talked that other night, I apologise now once for all. I've been hoping for months and mon—for a long time, I mean, that I might run across you. You're so magnificently steady. That other place stopped being steady.... This is the place to write that book. I want to write it. I've never wanted anything so much. It would be on Vicarage lines, I suppose, but oh—immensely bigger! Freedom, scope! The Vicarage was well enough in its way, but fussy and niggly and scratchy. I can do this largely, grandly—I know so much more, you see—and as long as I don't take any risks——"
Then, in spite of his own last words, he swung suddenly round, and the youthful grey-blue eyes were all a-sparkle. They sparkled with daring, as if, though a risk was a risk, there was sometimes prudence in taking it. The wicker of his chair began to creak under the working of his hand.
"One little talk can't make much difference," he muttered. "Do me good probably—magnificently steady——" Then he flashed brightly round on me—an artist at the height of his power confronting a stupendous and magnificent task.
"You see, don't you, George? You see how I'm placed, don't you?" he demanded.
"Not very clearly."
"Then I'll tell you. I want to write this book. I want to write it as Cheops made his Pyramid, as Moses made his Decalogue—to last for ever. If I can't write it no living man can. Why? Because no living man combines in himself what I combine—the ripest and fullest store of knowledge and experience and all the irresistible recklessness and belief of youth at the same time. Here I stand, between the two, and if I can only stay so I shall write—I shall write—oh, such a book as never was dreamed of! So I've got to stand still just where I am now. I haven't got to budge from thirty-three—that, as nearly as I can tell from myself, is the age I am now. You see——"