"All the same, I have an idea there is." She stared at me unflinchingly, and then added: "Never mind--if you won't tell me, then you won't. Let's talk of something else." And we did. IV Throughout all the early months of that year I was almost heading for a breakdown myself. I certainly hope that I shall never have to work so hard again. In a sort of way it was Severn's fault, though he meant well enough, just as he had meant well enough in getting Terry fixed up with Karelsky. But Severn was like that; he'd help you so carelessly that unless you used remarkably shrewd judgment of your own the help might turn out to be a hindrance. On this occasion he got for me the editorship of a rather decadent weekly that had already killed or bankrupted my predecessors and would have done the same to me if I hadn't thrown up the sponge after three months' hard labour. The wretched thing gave me no proper time for meals and sleep, let alone for Hindhead week-ends and the novel about Terry. From Christmas till Easter I don't think I added a word. There was, perhaps, another reason for this besides pressure of business. Terry's continued slackness and inertia disappointed me, and (I may as well confess it) I began to wonder if he were altogether the man I had taken him for. Anyhow, if he were going to stay on indefinitely at the Valley Hotel, I didn't see how I could write a readable novel about him, unless I chose to end it fictitiously. I remember, during the few spare moments I had during those days, making drafts of such possible endings; one of them was that Severn should die under an operation, and that Terry and Helen, after suitable novelistic adventures, should marry and end the book happily. Another dragged Mizzi back into the story, and I think this was the one I should have favoured, chiefly because the character of Mizzi always appealed to me But I hadn't time for any of them, which was perhaps just as well. Karelsky landed, I recollect, in mid-April, and from his first moment on English soil was never without a posse of newspaper-men at his heels. I had several chances of meeting him professionally, but avoided them all; it wasn't possible, unfortunately, to avoid the constant references to him on placards, in the press, and from platform and pulpit. For over a week he had Fleet Street positively begging him for copy, and all he gave in return for fabulous cheques was a vast quantity of worthless self-advertisement. I found myself loathing the man and his methods so intensely that I even tried to persuade my proprietors to let me run a campaign against him in my paper; fortunately for me, in view of what happened subsequently, they refused.