Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying strict attention to business. Often my other self, little Paul of the sad eyes, would seek to lure me from my work. But for my vehement determination never to rest for a moment till I had purchased back my honesty, my desire--growing day by day, till it became almost a physical hunger--to feel again the pressure of Norah's strong white hand in mine, he might possibly have succeeded. Heaven only knows what then he might have made of me: politician, minor poet, more or less able editor, hampered by convictions--something most surely of but little service to myself. Now and again, with a week to spare--my humour making holiday, nothing to be done but await patiently its return--I would write stories for my own pleasure. They made no mark; but success in purposeful work is of slower growth. Had I persisted--but there was money to be earned. And by the time my debts were paid, I had established a reputation. “Madness!” argued practical friends. “You would be throwing away a certain fortune for, at the best, a doubtful competence. The one you know you can do, the other--it would be beginning your career all over again.” “You would find it almost impossible now,” explained those who spoke, I knew, words of wisdom, of experience. “The world would never listen to you. Once a humourist always a humourist. As well might a comic actor insist upon playing Hamlet. It might be the best Hamlet ever seen upon the stage; the audience would only laugh--or stop away.” Drawn by our mutual need of sympathy, “Goggles” and I, seeking some quiet corner in the Club, would pour out our souls to each other. He would lay before me, at some length, his conception of Romeo--an excellent conception, I have no doubt, though I confess it failed to interest me. Somehow I could not picture him to myself as Romeo. But I listened with every sign of encouragement. It was the price I paid him for, in turn, listening to me while I unfolded to him my ideas how monumental literature, helpful to mankind, should be imagined and built up. “Perhaps in a future existence,” laughed Goggles, one evening, rising as the clock struck seven, “I shall be a great tragedian, and you a famous poet. Meanwhile, I suppose, as your friend Brian puts it, we are both sinning our mercies. After all, to live is the most important thing in life.” I had strolled with him so far as the cloak-room and was helping him to get into his coat. “Take my advice”--tapping me on the chest, he fixed his funny, fishy eyes upon me. Had I not known his intention to be serious, I should have laughed, his expression was so comical. “Marry some dear little woman” (he was married himself to a placid lady of about twice his own weight); “one never understands life properly till the babies come to explain it to one.”