to see a drawer underneath is really not the same thing as picking a lock. I’m not a burglar. It might happen to anyone to lift the marble slab off a table. Theseus must have been about my age when he lifted the stone. The difficulty in the case of a table is the clock as a rule.... I shouldn’t have dreamt of lifting the marble slab off the table if I hadn’t wanted to mend the clock.... What doesn’t happen to everyone is to find arms underneath--or guilty love-letters. Pooh! The important thing was that I should learn the facts. It isn’t everyone who can indulge in the luxury of a ghost to reveal them, like Hamlet. Hamlet! It’s curious how one’s point of view changes according as one is the off-spring of crime or legitimacy. I’ll think about that later on--after I have dined.... Was it wrong of me to read those letters!... No, I should be feeling remorseful! And if I hadn’t read the letters, I should have had to go on living in ignorance and falsehood and submission. Oh, for a draught of air! Oh, for the open sea! ‘Bernard! Bernard, that green youth of yours ...’ as Bossuet says. Seat your youth on that bench, Bernard. What a beautiful morning! There really are days when the sun seems to be kissing the earth. If I could get rid of myself for a little, there’s not a doubt but I should write poetry.” And as he lay stretched on the bench, he got rid of himself so effectually that he fell asleep. VII LILIAN AND VINCENT THE sun, already high in the heavens, caresses Vincent’s bare foot on the wide bed, where he is lying beside Lilian. She sits up and looks at him, not knowing that he is awake, and is astonished to see a look of anxiety on his face. It is possible that Lady Griffith loved Vincent; but what she loved in him was success. Vincent was tall, handsome, slim, but he did not know how to hold himself, how to sit down or get up. He had an expressive face, but he did his hair badly. Above all she admired the boldness and robustness of his intellect; he was certainly highly educated, but she thought him uncultivated. With the instinct of a mistress and a mother, she hung over this big boy of hers and made it her task to form him. He was her creation--her statue. She taught him to polish his nails, to part his hair on one side instead of brushing it back, so that his brow, when it was half hidden by a stray lock, looked all the whiter and loftier. And then instead of the modest little ready-made bows he used to wear, she gave him really becoming neck-ties. Decidedly Lady Griffith loved Vincent; but she could not put up with him when he was silent or “moody,” as she called it. She gently passes a finger over Vincent’s forehead, as though to efface a wrinkle--those two deep vertical furrows which start from his eyebrows, and give his face a look almost of suffering.