thought about it a great deal, and did and refrained from doing ten
thousand things for the sake of it. I kept up a solicitude for it,
as it were by inertia, long after things had happened and changes
occurred in me that rendered its completion impossible. Under
certain very artless pretences, we wanted steadfastly to make a
handsome position in the world, achieve respect, SUCCEED. Enormous
unseen changes had been in progress for years in my mind and the
realities of my life, before our general circle could have had any
inkling of their existence, or suspected the appearances of our
life. Then suddenly our proceedings began to be deflected, our
outward unanimity visibly strained and marred by the insurgence of
these so long-hidden developments.

That career had its own hidden side, of course; but when I write of
these unseen factors I do not mean that but something altogether
broader. I do not mean the everyday pettinesses which gave the
cynical observer scope and told of a narrower, baser aspect of the
fair but limited ambitions of my ostensible self. This "sub-
careerist" element noted little things that affected the career,
made me suspicious of the rivalry of so-and-so, propitiatory to so-
and-so, whom, as a matter of fact, I didn't respect or feel in the
least sympathetic towards; guarded with that man, who for all his
charm and interest wasn't helpful, and a little touchy at the
appearance of neglect from that. No, I mean something greater and
not something smaller when I write of a hidden life.

In the ostensible self who glowed under the approbation of Altiora
Bailey, and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated, in
the House and in smoking-room gossip, you really have as much of a
man as usually figures in a novel or an obituary notice. But I am