"I beg," Bond hurried on, "that you won't communicate this to a living soul. I am the only one who suspects the real truth. If it came to be generally known all human motives would be lacking, all human activities would be paralyzed--the whole world would come to a standstill. Mum's the word. For if the problem is insoluble and meant to be, just as sure is it that we were not intended to suspect the truth." Abner gasped--dredging the air for a word. "Of course," Bond went ahead, less fantastically, "I know I ought to shut my eyes to all this and start in to accomplish something more vital, more indigenous--less of the marquise and more of the milkmaid, in fact----" "Write about the things you know and like," said Abner curtly. His tone acknowledged his inability to keep pace with such whimsicalities or to sympathize with them. "If to know and to like were one with me, as they appear to be with you! A boyhood in the country--what a grand beginning! But the things I know are the things I don't like, and the things I like are not always the things I know--oftener the things I feel." Bond was speaking with a greater sincerity than he usually permitted himself. The right touch just then might have determined his future: he was quite as willing to become a Veritist as to remain a mere Dilettante. Abner tossed his head with a suppressed snort; he felt but little inclined to give encouragement to this manikin, this tidier-up after studio teas, this futile spinner of sophistications. No, the curse of a city boyhood was upon the fellow. Why look for anything great or vital from one born and bred in the vitiated air of the town? "Oh, well," he said, half-contemptuously, and not half trying to hide his contempt, "you are doing very well as it is. Some of your work is not without traces of style; and I suppose style is what you are after. But meat for _me_!" Bond lapsed back into his cushions, feeling a little hurt and very feeble and unimportant. Clearly the big thing, the sincere thing, the significant thing was beyond his reach. _The City's Maw_ must remain unwritten. VIII Abner tramped down the corridor and walked in on Giles. He found the decorator busy over two or three large sketches for panels. "For another Trust man?" he asked. "No," replied Giles; "these are for a blameless old gentleman that has passed a life of honest toil in the wholesale hardware business. Don't you think he's entitled to a few flowers by this time?" "What kind of flowers are they?" "Passion-flowers and camellias." "Humph! Do they grow round here?" "Hardly. My old gentleman hasn't given himself a vacation for twenty-five years, and he wants to get as far away from 'here' as possible." Abner gave another "Humph!" Wigs and brocades; passion-flowers and camellias. All this in a town that had just seen the completion of the eighteenth chapter of _Regeneration_. Well, regeneration was coming none too soon. "What's the matter with Bond?" he asked suddenly.