“We need not bother about that yet. It will come. Fate will decide it for us.”
“What do you mean, Andrew? How curiously you talk about the book sometimes—so precisely as if it were true!”
Trenchard smiled again, struck a match, and lit his pipe.
“It seems true to me—when I am writing it,” he answered. “I have been writing it these last two days and nights when I have been away, and now I can go forward, if you agree to the new development which I suggest.”
It was night. He had been absent for some days, and had just returned. Henley, meanwhile, had been raging because the book had come to a complete standstill. He himself could do nothing at it, since they had reached a dead-lock, and had not talked over any new scenes, or mutually decided upon the turn events were now to take. He felt rather cross and sore.
“You can go forward,” he said: “yes, after your holiday. You might at least tell me when you are going.”
“I never know myself,” Andrew said rather sadly.
He was looking very white and worn, and his eyes were heavy.
“But I have thought some fresh material out. My idea is this: The man now becomes such a complete slave to the morphia habit that concealment of the fact is scarcely possible. And, indeed, he ceases to desire to conceal it from the woman. The next scene will be an immensely powerful one—that in which he tells her the truth.”
“You do not think it would be more natural if she found it out against his will? It seems to me that what he had concealed so long he would try to hide for ever.”