ut was never
convinced that his time had come; yet through all the years he was
gaining strength, securing possession of my mind, and gathering to him,
magnet-like, the thousand observations which my experience sent in his
direction. In my mind his life-story ended with his death at the Cote
Dorion. For years and years I saw his ending there. Yet it all seemed to
me so futile, despite the wonder of his personality, that I could make
nothing of him, and though always fascinated by his character I was held
back from exploiting it, because of the hopelessness of it all. It led
nowhere. It was the 'quid refert' of the philosopher, and I could not
bring myself to get any further than an interrogation mark at the end of
a life which was all scepticism, mind and matter, and nothing more.

There came a day, however, when that all ended, when the doors were
flung wide to a new conception of the man, and of what he might have
become. I was going to America, and I paid an angry and reluctant visit
to my London tailor thirty-six hours before I was to start. A suit of
clothes had been sent home which, after an effective trying-on, was a
monstrosity. I went straight to my tailor, put on the clothes and bade
him look at them. He was a great tailor-he saw exactly what I saw, and
what I saw was bad; and when a tailor will do that, you may be quite
sure he is a good and a great man. He said the clothes were as bad as
they could be, but he added: "You shall have them before you sail, and
they shall be exactly as you want them. I'll have the foreman down." He
rang a bell. Presently the door swung open and in stepped a man with
an eyeglass in his eye. There, with a look at once reflective and
penetrating, with a figure at once slovenly and alert, was a caricature
of Charley Steele as I had known him, and of all his characteristics.
There was such a resemblance as an ugly child in a family may have to
his handsome brother. It was Charley Steele with a twist--gone to seed.
Looking at him in blank amazement, I burst out: "Good heavens, so you
didn't die, Charley Steele! You became a tailor!"

All at once the whole new landscape of my story as it eventually became,
spread out before me. I was justified in waiting all the years. My
discontent with the futile end of the tale as I originally knew it
and saw it was justified. Charley Steele, brilliant, enigmatic and
epigrammatic, did not die at the Cote Dorion, but lived in that far
valley by Dalg