We needn't bother about the last one; I only put it in to show that thirty-three's got to come in the middle by hook or by crook. Now do you see what I'm up against? I _must_ have sixteen at one end, I _must_ have forty-five at the other, and I _must_ if possible have thirty-three in the middle, because if I don't write this as I wrote _The Vicarage of Bray_, only infinitely more so, I shan't write it at all. But thirty-three's a false middle. Thirty's the true middle, and thirty's perfectly useless to me. I was doing quite other things when I was thirty before.... But as matters stand, if I'm thirty-three I can only remember forty-five and twenty-one. If I'm thirty-three and remember sixteen, which is what I'm after, then ... God knows what would happen at your end; I should have to remember fifty, I suppose, and I've never been fifty to remember. So something's wrong, and I'm trying to fake it." "Derry!" I choked. "For the love of God turn up that light!" "Eh? Certainly. Then I can show you my diagrams. This is all elementary stuff, but I thought it would give you a faint idea of the problem. Now the most important factor of all----" But I didn't want to see the hideous thing in diagram form. It even added to my horror that he didn't seem to see it as hideous at all. He was perplexed, impatient, angry even, but for the rest he had approached his problem as methodically and dispassionately as if he had merely been taking the reading of his gas-meter. Just so in the past he had approached that sufficiently-enormous work, _The Vicarage of Bray_--and in the intervals had taken Julia Oliphant to Chalfont, jumped five-barred gates, and had posed for her, stripped to the waist with her sewing-machine held above his head. He had turned up the gas again, and was hunting in a corner--for his diagrams, I supposed. Suddenly I rose, crossed over to him, and put my hand on his shoulder. "Leave it alone, old man," I said in a shocked voice. "I don't want to see them. I won't look at them. I'm too afraid. Give that book up now. We aren't meant to write books of that kind. Give it up, clear out of here, and let's go away together somewhere." I don't think I altered his resolution in the least. He merely patted my shoulder, humouring me. "Oh, we'll start it anyway, George. Once I get fairly going I don't mind taking a day or two or a week off with you. I always enjoyed stealing a few days when I was busiest. No, the thing's got hold of me, and it will have to run its course, like measles. I may possibly be able to split the difference between thirty and thirty-three. I'm doing my very utmost." "How?" It seemed to me that he became evasive. "Oh--just little dodges----" "Like watching slowed-down pictures?" He became still more evasive. "If I hadn't spoken to you to-night you'd never have seen me, you know," he reproached me. "I've been looking for you though. And I did see you once." "Where was that?" he asked quickly.