Something within me, I don't know what, warned me that here it might be well to be as careful as he. The safest thing to do appeared to be to let him run on, and I did so. "Yes," he continued, his fine smooth brow gathered in thought, "I know it's enormous; perhaps too staggering altogether for one man. But do you know," he laughed a little as if at himself, "I wonder whether it _is_ so enormous after all! There might be quite a simple idea underlying it, I mean. What's more enormous than human nature? Yet every wretched little novelist tackles that every time he writes a book. It all depends on how much you see in a thing. I'm not so sure that I wouldn't as soon tackle one day of the whole world's life as one single hour of a human being's heart." I spoke warily. "You haven't tackled it yet?" He hesitated. "N--o," he said slowly. Then, quickening a little, "The fact is, George, a job like that would have to be rather specially approached. I mean unless you were at the very top of your form you'd be bound to come a cropper. No good starting a thing till you know your tools are sharp--in this case your faculties. I'm--I'm sharpening myself now, if you know what I mean." At this point I became incautious. I ceased to listen to the voice that warned me too to be careful. "Well, that's what I want to ask you," I said. "I want to know what you're doing here and why you left Cambridge Circus like that." I was instantly sorry I had said it. Just as wrestlers on a mat lie locked, with little apparent movement, yet in the fiercest intensity of prolonged strain, so I felt that something struggled in him. I heard it in his voice, I saw it in the boyish grey-blue eyes that sought mine. "Don't, please, old fellow," he pleaded anxiously. "If you mean the rot I talked that other night, I apologise now once for all. I've been hoping for months and mon--for a long time, I mean, that I might run across you. You're so magnificently steady. That other place stopped being steady.... This is the place to write that book. I want to write it. I've never wanted anything so much. It would be on _Vicarage_ lines, I suppose, but oh--immensely bigger! Freedom, scope! The _Vicarage_ was well enough in its way, but fussy and niggly and scratchy. I can do this largely, grandly--I _know_ so much more, you see--and as long as I don't take any risks----" Then, in spite of his own last words, he swung suddenly round, and the youthful grey-blue eyes were all a-sparkle. They sparkled with daring, as if, though a risk was a risk, there was sometimes prudence in taking it. The wicker of his chair began to creak under the working of his hand. "One little talk can't make much difference," he muttered. "Do me good probably--magnificently steady----" Then he flashed brightly round on me--an artist at the height of his power confronting a stupendous and magnificent task. "You see, don't you, George? You see how I'm placed, don't you?" he demanded. "Not very clearly."