"I don't know."

"You see, Charlotte," he dropped the noble for the confidential, "I have
got things to say, things that are vital to me. I couldn't put them in
my other work. How could I? It would have seemed--you will think me
ridiculous--a kind of prostitution."

"Yes," I said.

"But they were clamouring for expression all the time. And I have kept
them down till I couldn't keep them down any longer. Of course, I know
my book won't be a success--a popular success, I mean--but it won't have
been written for the multitude but for the few--the people who really
care, who really understand. It may be even thought," there was
exultation in his voice, "dull."

"Well," I said, "I think it is very brave of you--and quite right. Truly
I do."

"I think I shall take a tiny cottage in a fishing village in
Devonshire," Delancey was as usual seeing things pictorially--bare
white-washed walls, blue and white linen curtains and a pot of wall
flowers.

A week later he came to see me again.

"When are you off to Devonshire?" I asked.

"I have decided to stay here," he answered, "there is a roar of life in