They walked without speaking through the musty-smelling region of Covent Garden, and had reached Long Acre before Henry broke the silence suddenly by remarking, as if after much considering of the point: "You said that one would find some true camaraderie among the literary set. That scarcely tallies with your rather pessimistic views of human nature in general." "Well, after all, it's difficult to be consistent--and speak your mind. My views of human nature remain unchanged, and though, as you have said, authors are very like folk, they do have a touch of brotherliness which you will find in no other profession; certainly not in the musical, of which I know something. There may appear to be a good deal of back-biting and jealousy among literary men; but they are always ready to encourage the new man, to applaud the conscientious worker. Remember that most authors of genius have first been proclaimed by their fellows of the pen. In the nature of things it must be so. The asinine public has to be told who are the writers worth reading. Mind you, the duffer will get never a leg up, and before any one gets a lift he has to show himself worthy of it. But I suppose the same might be said of the business world as well." "Do you think I'm going the right way for a leg up, then?--if I may bore you with my own petty affairs." "Not yet; but you'll soon be shaping that way. This I realise: journalism will give any moderately clever fellow a living, but even a genius will scarcely win a reputation that way. Billy Ricketts writes a book, and even if it's a bad one, Billy is for a week or two more noticed in the papers than the editor of the _Times_ will be in five years. The journalist who gives his best to his paper is a pathetic figure--from the British or Henry Charles point of view, I mean, as I'm looking at the situation with your ideas to direct me, your view of success. He is probably our nearest approach to the Greek sculptors I seem to remember quoting to you once. Anonymity is essential to the true artist, I hold; and strangely, it is the newspaper man--none less artistic--who conforms to this law in England, perhaps unwillingly." "Of course, we'll never agree on that point," said Henry, "as I'm all for personality." "So; that's what I know, and hence my line of reasoning. Play up your personality for all it's worth, and be happy. It's not my way; but no matter. And to do so, journalism is at best only a training school. What you must do is a book. Once you make a moderate success with a book, your precious personality has become a marketable thing in modern Philistia." "You mean a novel, I suppose?"