ings I most needed to forget.
I wasn't going to write about the British aristocracy, nor about any
kind of supernatural presence.... I did write a novel--my last--while I
was at Vaule. "Mr. and Mrs. Robinson." Did you ever come across a copy
of it?

I nodded gravely.

'Ah; I wasn't sure,' said Maltby, 'whether it was ever published. A
dreary affair, wasn't it? I knew a great deal about suburban life.
But--well, I suppose one can't really understand what one doesn't love,
and one can't make good fun without real understanding. Besides, what
chance of virtue is there for a book written merely to distract
the author's mind? I had hoped to be healed by sea and sunshine and
solitude. These things were useless. The labour of "Mr. and Mrs.
Robinson" did help, a little. When I had finished it, I thought I might
as well send it off to my publisher. He had given me a large sum of
money, down, after "Ariel," for my next book--so large that I was rather
loth to disgorge. In the note I sent with the manuscript, I gave no
address, and asked that the proofs should be read in the office. I
didn't care whether the thing were published or not. I knew it would be
a dead failure if it were. What mattered one more drop in the foaming
cup of my humiliation? I knew Braxton would grin and gloat. I didn't
mind even that.'

'Oh, well,' I said, 'Braxton was in no mood for grinning and gloating.
"The Drones" had already appeared.'

Maltby had never heard of 'The Drones'--which I myself had remembered
only in the course of his disclosures. I explained to him that it was
Braxton's second novel, and was by way of being a savage indictment
of the British aristocracy; that it was written in the worst possible
taste, but was so very dull that it fell utterly flat; that Braxton
had forthwith taken, with all of what Maltby had called 'the passionate
force and intensity of his nature,' to drink, and had presently gone
under and not re-emerged.

Maltby gave signs of genuine, though not deep, emotion, and cited two
or three of the finest passages from 'A Faun on the Cotswolds.' He even
expressed a conviction that 'The Drones' must have been misjudged. He
said he blamed himself more than ever for yielding to that bad impulse
at that Soiree.

'And yet,' he mused, 'and yet, honestly, I can't find it in my heart
to regret that I did yield. I can only wish that all had turned out as
well, in the end, for Braxton as for me. I wish he could have won out,
a