This book had been his earliest ambition. It had been the sole
companion of his thoughts for years. It had been the little idol
which must be served. Without a word of it being written, it had
grown with his growth. His notes for it comprised all that he had
filched from life. He had not hurried. He was leisurely by nature.
Then had come the war, lifting him out of all the things he knew.
And, after the war, its great weariness. Not until he had met Desire
and found, in her fresh interest, something of his own lost
enthusiasm, had he been able to work again. Then, in a glow of
recovered energy, the book had been begun. And all had gone well
until the book's inspirer had begun to usurp the place of the book
itself. (Spence smiled as he realized that Desire was painstakingly
tracing the course of her self-caused destruction.) How could he
think of the book when he wanted only to think of her? Insensibly,
his gathered facts had begun to lose their prime importance, his
deductions had lost their sense of weight, all that he had done
seemed strangely insignificant--it was like looking at something
through the wrong end of a telescope. The great book was a star
which grew steadily smaller.

The proportion was wrong. He knew that. But at present he could do
nothing to readjust it. Two interests cannot occupy the same space
at the same time. The book interest had simply succumbed to an
interest older and more potent.

"In this chapter, the Sixth," Desire was saying, "you seem to lose
some of the serious purpose which is a prominent note in the opening
chapters. You begin to treat things casually. You almost allow
yourself to be humorous. Now is this supposed to be a humorous book,