The Figure in the Carpet

produced the feeling - a very old story with me, I beg you to believe - under the momentary influence of which I used in speaking to that good lady the words you so naturally resent.

e in the shins. Whenever since I've happened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazing away - still missing it, I mean, deliciously. YOU miss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable assurance; the fact

r as he talked. "YOU a failure - heavens! Wh

me appear to myself, and probably to him, a rare dunce. I was on the point of exclaiming "Ah yes, don't tell me: for my honour, for that of the craft, don't!" when he went on in a manner that showed he had read my thought and had his own idea of the probability of our some day redeeming ourselves. "By my little point I mean - what shall I call it? - the p

fascinated - easily, you'll say; but I wasn't going after all to be put off my guard. "Yo

the finest fullest intention of the lot, and the application of it has been, I think, a triumph of patience, of ingenuity. I ought to leave that to somebody else to say; but that nobody does say it is precisely what we're talking about. It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else

bility indeed. "You ca

e modesty. It's reall

at you've carrie

is the thing in life I thin

hink you ought - just a tri

y intention in his great blank face!" At this, laughing out again, Vereker lai

tiated. There must therefor

have become practically all you'd see. To me it's exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney. Besides, the critic just ISN'T a plain man: if he were, pray, what would he be doing in his neighbour's garden? You're anything but a plain man yourself, and the very raison d'etre of you all is that you're little demons of subtlety. If my great af

quite like

wo

t. It's the

be pained to part with it, and he confessed that it was indeed with him now the great amusement of life. "I live almost to see if it will e

ared; "you make me determined to do or die." T

and as if to bid me good-night. "Ah my dear fel

hand. "I won't make use of the expression then," I said, "in the article in which I shall eventually announce my discovery, though I dare say I shal

bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It's stuck into every volume as your foot

the style or something in the thought? An

o be crude and my distinctions pitiful. "Good-night, my dear

gence might spoil it?

an element of form or an element of feeling? What I contend th

he language. Perhaps it's a preference for the letter P!" I ventured profanely to break out. "Papa, potatoes, prunes - that sort of thing?" He was suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn't got the right letter. But

sighed, "if I were only, pe

ourse. But why should you despise us chaps

e it in twenty volumes? I do it in my way," he

ish difficult," I

own. There's no compulsion. Y

to think thi

in the morning that

gain with him a few steps along the passage. "This extraordinary 'general intention,' as you call it - for tha

ll it that, though it's pe

d. "You know you're

to tell you so; but it

a beauty so r

the end of the corridor, while I looked after him rather yearningly, he turned and caught sight of my puzzled face.

'd have spent half the night with him. At three o'clock in the morning, not sleeping, remembering moreover how indispensable he was