custard and prunes in a Bloomsbury boarding house. It is not my
intention to represent Edith as merely disreputable. Neither is she a
tragic figure. I want to know why she misses. I cannot altogether
analyse her 'into a combination of known elements' but I fail to touch
anything definitely unanalysable.

"Is Edith, in spite of her romantic past, pursuing steadily some hidden
purpose of her own? Are her migrations and eccentricities the sign of
some unguessed consistency? I find in her a quantity of shrewd
observation, an excellent fund of criticism, but I cannot connect them
into any peculiar vision. Her sarcasm at the expense of her friends is
delightful, but I doubt whether it is more than an attempt to mould
herself from outside, by the impact of hostilities, to emphasise her
isolation. Everyone says of her, 'How perfectly impenetrable!' I
suspect that within there is only the confusion of a dusty garret."

"I test people," said Eeldrop, "by the way in which I imagine them as
waking up in the morning. I am not drawing upon memory when I imagine
Edith waking to a room strewn with clothes, papers, cosmetics, letters
and a few books, the smell of Violettes de Parme and stale tobacco.
The sunlight beating in through broken blinds, and broken blinds
keeping out the sun until Edith can compel herself to attend to another
day. Yet the vision does not give me much pain. I think of her as an
artist without the slightest artistic power."

"The artistic temperament--" began Appleplex.

"No, not that." Eeldrop snatched away the opportunity. "I mean that
what holds the artist together is the work which he does; separate him
from his work and he either disintegrates or solidifies. There is no