In that paragraph Wallace’s name was, as usual, coupled with that of his novel _As the Crow Flies_, a precedent that was invariably followed two months later in his obituary notices. (It will be remembered that he died of enteric in June 1900.) Many of the writers assumed that the book had already been published, but some of the better informed expressed their eagerness to read the book which they understood had been completed before Wallace went out to the front. I firmly believe that our failure to discover that precious manuscript of Wallace’s was the cause of old Hallows’s breakdown and subsequent retirement from the business. He used to go up to Highgate two or three days a week to search Wallace’s house for possible hiding places. “He would have been sure to have put it in some very safe place before he left the country,” he would say, and then fret himself into a fever lamenting the “rank imbecility” of not having insisted on taking charge of the precious script before Wallace went away. Rice’s theory was that Wallace had taken the MS. with him to make his final revision, but I have often wondered whether Wallace had ever begun it. I have found a suggestion of that one fatal omission, in his title. He took too direct a method. So far as he was concerned, the book was written, and published, and noticed, without his having put pen to paper. But the queer thing is that the unwritten book has outlived him. For some reason it was not forgotten in the stress of the South African war. And it will be remembered that, in the reaction of the first years of this century, _As the Crow Flies_ was constantly “quoted,” and that there was quite a controversy as to whether the figure of Joseph Blake did not stand for that of Joseph Chamberlain. Indeed, I was tempted to put down these notes of the true facts of the case because a friend asked me yesterday where he could get a book called _As the Crow Flies_, by George Wallace. A man had told him, he said, that it was the finest novel of the century. THE NIGHT OF CREATION PART 1: THE DISCUSSION 1 The discussion had threatened while they were still at dinner. Leslie Vernon had begun it: and there had been a hardness and a determination in his expression that had sharpened the suggestion of fanaticism in his clever face. Little Harrison, already looking a trifle flushed and dishevelled, had only managed to avoid the direct issue by talking rapidly, and with something more than his usual brilliance, about the true inwardness of the Russian Revolution; a subject upon which he had recently acquired some very special information. Even Lady Ulrica More, who was manifestly prepared to encourage Vernon, had been borne down and fairly talked into silence.