I put my arm round his shoulders and my hand gave him an affectionate grip. My heart ached for the dear fellow, and I longed, in the plain man's way, to break down the walls of reserve, which like those of the Inquisition Chamber, I felt were closing tragically upon him.
"Come, come," I continued. "Get it out. It's obvious that the thing is suffocating you. I'll tell nobody—not even that you've told me—neither Doria nor Barbara—it will be the confidence of the confessional. You'll be all the better for it. Believe me."
He shrugged himself free from my grasp and turned away; his nervous fingers plucked unconsciously at his evening tie until it was loosened and the ends hung dissolutely over his shirt front.
"You're very good, Hilary," said he, looking at every spot in the room except my eyes. "If I could tell you, I would. But it's an enormous canvas. I could give you no idea—" The furrow deepened between his brows—"If I told you the scheme you would get about the same dramatic impression as if you read, say, the letter R, in a dictionary. I'm putting into this novel," he flickered his fingers in front of me—"everything that ever happened in human life."
I regarded him in some wonder.
"My dear fellow," said I, "you can't compress a Liebig's Extract of Existence between the covers of a six-shilling novel."
"I can," said he, "I can!" He thumped my writing table, so that all the loose brass and glass on it rattled. "And by God! I'm going to do it."
"But, my dearest friend," I expostulated, "this is absurd. It's megalomania—la folie des grandeurs."
"It's the divinest folly in the world," said he.
He threw a cigar stump into the fireplace and poured himself out and drank a stiff whisky and soda. Then he laughed in imitation of his familiar self.