admit it) extremely exhausting. But never have my patience and endurance
been more severely tested than during the year of Delancey's
masterpiece. He finally decided that in the foreground, there was to be
the clash of two human souls and in the background, the collision of two
worlds--the old (pre-War) and the new. In fact, a partie carrée of
conflicts.

"You with your love of form," he explained to me, "will appreciate the
care I have given to the structure. It is," he added, "difficult to
mould vast masses of material."

As the months went by I began to be horribly afraid that Delancey's
novel would be very, very long indeed. And even if nobody read it
through, not even a reviewer, I should have to without skipping a word
or a comma.

"The sentences," Delancey told me, "are rather long. I find the
semicolon very useful for cumulative effects." A vast array of words
policed by semi-colons. I felt a little dizzy. Would they be able to
keep order?

"Of course," he continued, "the interest is very largely psychological,
but I regard the book mainly as a document--a social document. The
fiction of to-day is the history of to-morrow."

This seemed conclusive. The book could not have less than 700 pages. A
social document with psychological interest and a double conflict. Why,
it would be short at that. And then, one day, when Delancey's book had
become to me a form of eternity, he arrived, breathless with excitement.