I saw, and I hope you too see the kindliness and delicacy of his action. Apparently I was in for a wigging, which was to be, not less, but still more of a wigging that I, his subordinate, was permitted to act as his host. As he said, he could have summoned me to his office or house, dressed me down, and dismissed me again; but Glenfield knows men and how to bind them to him by accepting things at their hands. It is so easy for Glenfield to give. "Well, can you guess?" he said, nodding to me over his liqueur. "Perhaps I can," I answered. "Then what about it? Are you getting tired of the job?" "Not," I answered slowly, "of the job. But I'm tired--very tired." He diagnosed me with a swift look. "South of France any good to you? Or Norway? Or anywhere else? I suppose young what's-his-name--Willett--could carry on?" "Oh, of course he's been running the whole show for weeks," I admitted. Then, "Look here, Glenfield; I'd better resign." "Don't be an ass," he replied promptly. "If I'd meant you to resign do you suppose I should have come here to-night? I sack men in my office, not while I'm drinking their liqueurs. Now tell me what's wrong. You haven't been yourself for some time." I frowned, hardly knowing what to reply. "This is most awfully good of you, but I hardly think it's a case for a holiday," I said at last with some embarrassment. "Well, tell me about it. Is it working double tides, or just post-war slump? We've all got that more or less." I mused and shook my head. "I wish you'd let me resign," I said again. He has an imperious eye, and I did not attempt to meet it. "Why?" he demanded.... I did not answer. Willett had loyally covered my too frequent absence and neglect, but I knew and Glenfield knew that I had let my paper down. The Circus was slipping backward. Possibly there was something in Glenfield's suggestion about post-war slump. Now, when all the world should have been working as it had never worked before, so little work seemed worth the doing. The _Circus_, which after all is a vastly important instrument of democratic government, seemed to me a thing of stunts and japes and cynical mockery of the recent stupendous years; my own work, once so much to me that I had sacrificed to it the joy and ease of half a life, seemed a thing that the world could do perfectly well without. I missed my timber and gun-cotton and cordage and corrugated iron. My real books were my stores-ledgers "A" and "B," the Regulations for Engineer Services my only Muse. I feared--nay, I almost hoped--that I should write no more novels. My bolt seemed shot. It is a depressing thing to have been a younger novelist and to have wasted your life.