I found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which I commend to my reader) I was able to master them little by little. The clearer they became, the greater was my bewilderment, my distress and horror. The whole thing was a nightmare. Afar, the great grisly background of what was in store for the poor dear art of letters; here, at the table, fixing on me a gaze that made me hot all over, the poor fellow whom--whom evidently--but no: whatever down-grade my character might take in coming years, I should never be such a brute as to-- Again I examined the screed. "Immajnari." But here Soames was, no more imaginary, alas! than I. And "labud"--what on earth was that? (To this day I have never made out that word.) "It's all very--baffling," I at length stammered. Soames said nothing, but cruelly did not cease to look at me. "Are you sure," I temporized, "quite sure you copied the thing out correctly?" "Quite." "Well, then, it's this wretched Nupton who must have made--must be going to make--some idiotic mistake. Look here Soames, you know me better than to suppose that I-- After all, the name Max Beerbohm is not at all an uncommon one, and there must be several Enoch Soameses running around, or, rather, Enoch Soames is a name that might occur to any one writing a story. And I don't write stories; I'm an essayist, an observer, a recorder. I admit that it's an extraordinary coincidence. But you must see--" "I see the whole thing," said Soames, quietly. And he added, with a touch of his old manner, but with more dignity than I had ever known in him, "Parlons d'autre chose." I accepted that suggestion very promptly. I returned straight to the more immediate future. I spent most of the long evening in renewed appeals to Soames to come away and seek refuge somewhere. I remember saying at last that if indeed I was destined to write about him, the supposed "stauri" had better have at least a happy ending. Soames repeated those last three words in a tone of intense scorn. "In life and in art," he said, "all that matters is an INEVITABLE ending." "But," I urged more hopefully than I felt, "an ending that can be avoided ISN'T inevitable." "You aren't an artist," he rasped. "And you're so hopelessly not an artist that, so far from being able to imagine a thing and make it seem true, you're going to make even a true thing seem as if you'd made it up. You're a miserable bungler. And it's like my luck." I protested that the miserable bungler was not I, was not going to be I, but T. K. Nupton; and we had a rather heated argument, in the thick of which it suddenly seemed to me that Soames saw he was in the wrong: he had quite physically cowered. But I wondered why--and now I guessed with a cold throb just why--he stared so past me. The bringer of that "inevitable ending" filled the doorway.