leave her without some words of consolation? I must write down that
she is there, because I see her there. There are some arrangements
to be made with the nurse, and then, when I am leaving the ward, or
at least intend to, my brain hurries the doctor up the ward to me. I
don't ' make him up.' I had not the remotest idea of the head doctor
appearing when I sat down to write. But now I see him approaching me
between the beds, and before I can pass him, as I want to, he
button-holes me and proceeds to explain that Tomkins never would
have died if he had undergone an operation that the doctor had
perceived from the very first moment was necessary. After a long
talk with him, perhaps, my pen stops. I pause: and when I pause I
know the inspiration has gone. As the ancients would say, the Muse
or the God has departed and dictates no more. I fling aside the
paper and look at my watch. Several hours passed in the hospital,
but I'll go round to the club now. And I go. I know Tomkins is dead.
It only occurs to me afterwards, as a secondary consideration, that
in consequence the MS. is finished. Tomkins was not for the
manuscript, but the manuscript for Tomkins. Now the point is--Can I
be held responsible for that scene? It is not my fault that I have
mentally seen a private soldier dying in hospital. The whole thing
was involuntary."

"Very extraordinary views!" muttered my father.

I shrugged my shoulders in silence, and called up Nous to give him
my untouched dinner.

"The best joke of it is, too," I said, suspending a strip of sirloin
over the collie's nose, "the publishers admit if I had less talent
they would print my things. I could not understand why my 'Laura