le of past days.

"I told you that it would give you an answer to your question when you
asked me what was the meaning of life. Well, have you discovered the
answer?"

"No," smiled Philip. "Won't you tell it me?"

"No, no, I can't do that. The answer is meaningless unless you discover it
for yourself."

LXXXIII

Cronshaw was publishing his poems. His friends had been urging him to do
this for years, but his laziness made it impossible for him to take the
necessary steps. He had always answered their exhortations by telling them
that the love of poetry was dead in England. You brought out a book which
had cost you years of thought and labour; it was given two or three
contemptuous lines among a batch of similar volumes, twenty or thirty
copies were sold, and the rest of the edition was pulped. He had long
since worn out the desire for fame. That was an illusion like all else.
But one of his friends had taken the matter into his own hands. This was
a man of letters, named Leonard Upjohn, whom Philip had met once or twice
with Cronshaw in the cafes of the Quarter. He had a considerable
reputation in England as a critic and was the accredited exponent in this
country of modern French literature. He had lived a good deal in France
among the men who made the Mercure de France the liveliest review of the
day, and by the simple process of expressing in English their point of
view he had acquired in England a reputation for originality. Philip had
read some of his articles. He had formed a style for himself by a close
imitation of Sir Thomas Browne; he used elaborate sentences, carefully
balanced, and obsolete, resplendent words: it gave his writing an
appearance of individuality. Leonard Upjohn had induced Cronshaw to give
him all his poems and found that there were enough to make a volume of
reasonable size. He promised to use his influence with publishers.
Cronshaw was in want of money. Since his illness he had found it more
difficult than ever to work steadily; he made barely enough to keep
himself in liquor; and when Upjohn wrote to him that this publisher and
the other, though admiring the poems, thought it not worth while to
publish them, Cronshaw began to grow interested. He wrote impressing upon
Upjohn his great need and urging him to make more strenuous efforts. Now
that he was going to die he wanted to leave behind him a published book,
and at the back of his mind was the feeling that he had produced great