One thing was clear. He would have to give it up. If necessary he would have to be made to give it up. If I couldn't persuade him, Julia must. But already I saw the cost to him. He was an artist, with a passionate need to create. He was an artist so highly specialised that the creation of a small thing merely irritated him. But see where he was placed! So close to the dreamed splendour that he brushed it with his fingertips, and then perhaps to see it recede, diminish, go out! To be conscious of that inordinate power, and to have the agony of knowing that it could not last long enough for the task to be completed! To be unique, as he was unique, and yet to be forced to share the common bitterness and humiliation and despair!... A few moments ago I risked the word "impious." To my way of thinking it was impiety. If it was not impiety I do not see why Prometheus was bound. For what was this monstrous right that Derwent Rose claimed, to put all the rest of us into the shadow of his own overweening and presumptuous glory? Who was he, to seize on immortality like this? Not satin slippers with poor little feet inside them that would soon, too soon be dust--not this was the sin. It was this other that is not forgiven. And man is forbidden to call his brother by the name that fitted Derwent Rose. Poor Derry! Apparently he could do nothing right. As Julia had said, his whole life had been one marvellous mistake after another. Suddenly I introduced Julia's name. He had not moved since his last words some minutes ago--that he thought God was more than a gland. The mews outside had come to life again. Cars were returning from suppers and the theatres; the glare of their headlights played palely about the upper part of his window-frame. He now turned his head and smiled. "Good sort, Julia. But she's forgotten all about me long ago." "What makes you think that?" But instead of answering my question he went musingly on. "Funny, that. Dashed funny. I forgot all about Julia when I was making those notes." "What notes?" "Why, of the way I strike people. Those who remember me and those who don't. I remembered that doctor, who'd only seen me once, but Julia, who's known me practically all my life, I go and forget all about. In fact there's only about one other person who's known me as long as Julia has, and she absolutely failed to recognise me when I spoke to her a year or so ago." My nerves became all jangled again. "Derry--_how_ long ago?" "About a year.... As you were. What am I talking about? Must stick to one scale of time, I suppose. I ought to have said about ten days ago." "What was all this?" I asked, though I knew well enough; and he became grave as he unfolded another aspect of his singular case to me.