"But, dear man, I have it already complete, to the last paradox. It is in my mind now, hastening to the tip of my tongue--" "No, Charteris, I will not hear you!" "--Art, just as Schiller long ago perceived, is an outcome of the human impulse to play, and to avoid tedium by using up such vigor as stays unemployed by the necessities of earning a living. The artist is life's playboy. The artist, to avert the threats of boredom, rather desperately makes sport with the universe--" "It is a universe you are quitting--" "--For, as you of course perceive, the literary artist plays: he does nothing else, except with haste and grudgingly: and the sole end of his endeavor is to divert himself--" But I had shaped the Parting Sign of Ageus, which is interpreted variously, but whose efficacy does not vary.... § 5 I hated thus to despatch the little fellow, after we had played together for all of twenty-two years. Besides, his going was not alone. A great many others, I suspected, departed with him: and I fancied that if, rising, I now looked out of the library window as far as the Mill Road, I might see yonder,--passing now away from me, now that our commerce was over, and travelling in motley companionship through the gray spring weather,--all the various men and women whose lives I had fashioned for me to play with in my books. Heaven only knew, if Heaven imprudently concerned itself with such matters, how many hundreds of them there must be.... And now they were all gone, I turned to the task of getting down upon paper my notions as to the aims of my writing, and some explanation as to what I had been about during the years which I had given over to the compiling of the Biography of Dom Manuel's life. For the task approached completion: or, rather, the game drew toward its end; and that ending might well be the appropriate season for me to sit out, irrevocably, while the others played on. However! once the Biography was really done, and once the volumes as yet accessible nowhere save in, as went my resources, that almost prohibitively priced Intended Edition, when these had been issued uniformly with the rest,--with the Kalki binding, and the usual number of misprints,--then I might or might not want to write something else. Or perhaps before that time came would come death. Time, either way, would settle the upshot without my aid. Meanwhile I most certainly wanted my epilogue, in the shape of a summing up which would explain, if only to me, just why I had been at pains to write this exceedingly long book,--which all other persons, whether obtusely or whether in self-protection, insisted upon regarding as _Jurgen_ and several other books. § 6