He was silent for a moment, and then the idea came to him. "My dear fellow," he exclaimed suddenly, brandishing his cigar, "the solution's staring us in the face and we haven't seen it! ... Man, it's a great notion! ... _Put_ it down on paper, as you say--put down every word of it! Then spin it out, or cut it down, as the case may be, into a full-length novel! ... I told you years ago that you'd have to write a novel some time or other--it's expected of every literary man. Now's your big chance--a novel about Terry, giving a rational and coherent account of all his virtues, vices, and vagaries!" I laughed, and said that the trouble would begin when other people's virtues, vices and vagaries invaded the story, as they certainly would. He answered: "That doesn't matter a bit. Change all our names and nobody will be the wiser." "Except ourselves." "What do you mean?" I said, rather carefully: "Well, there are certain things that you and I know, and that Helen doesn't know, aren't there?" "I suppose there are." "There are also--maybe--things that Helen and I know, and that you don't know." "_Really_?" His eyes suddenly sparkled. "But, my dear chap, what a splendid reason for writing the novel! Pour all these strange and exclusive secrets into the melting-pot--let's all of us know the plain unadulterated (and, if possible, unadulterous) truth about one another, and damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough'!" Argumentatively it sounded all right; in practice, as I could see, it bristled with dangers and objections. And yet the idea of setting down the truth about Terry began to be just slightly fascinating, and all the rest of the evening it was vaguely on my mind. So also must it have been on Severn's, for the last thing he said when I bade him good-night was: "As soon as you get home, take a pen and a clean sheet of paper and write 'Chapter One' at the top left-hand corner.... I'm serious, mind; in fact, I shall ring you up in the morning and ask if you've done it...." VII Of course I didn't do it. And when, as he had promised, he rang me up the next morning, I told him that even if I did tackle the novel (which was by no means decided), it was unlikely that I should begin for some time. It was a big undertaking, I said, and would need a good deal of planning and thinking over before even a word was written. And yet I wrote the first sentence that very evening. It was Saturday, and I had motor-cycled over to the Valley Hotel. Terry was out when I arrived, so I sat in Taplow's garden waiting for him. And there and then, since there was nothing else to do, I thought I would make a few rough preliminary notes, and I wrote, on a sheet of hotel writing-paper the words: "First met him outside the Tube Station at Hampstead." After that I felt I wanted to go on in straightforward narrative form, so I stuck an "I" in front and continued. And so, on that sudden impulse, it began.