her to whom I sent it accepted it. It was published and had
quite a success. I thought I was made for life. Anything seemed
possible to one. After all, so far as one's possibilities went one was
on a level with any one--Shakespeare, Dante, any one you like. One
might do anything... . I published a book a year, after that, for ten
years--ten years ten books, and then awoke to the fact that I was
nothing at all and would never be anything--that I would never write
like Shakespeare, and, a matter of equal importance, would never sell
like Mrs. Henry Wood. Not that I wished to write like any one else. I
had a great idea of keeping to my own individuality, but I saw quite
clearly that what I had in myself--all of it--was no real importance to
any one. I might so well have been a butcher or baker for all that it
mattered. I saw that I was one of those unfortunate people--there are
many of them--just in between the artists and the shopkeepers. I was an
artist all right, but not a good enough one to count; had I been a
shopkeeper I might have sold my goods."

"Well, then, here's your question, Miss Cardinal. Why on earth did I go
on writing? ... Simply because I couldn't help myself. Writing was the
only thing in the world that gave me happiness. I thought too that
there might be people, here and there, unknown to me who cared for what
I did. Not many of course--I soon discovered that outside the small
library set in London no one had ever heard of me. When I was younger I
had fancied that that to me fiery blazing advertisement: "New Novel by
William Magnus, author of ..." must cause men to stop in the street,
exclaim, rush home to tell their wives, 'Do you know Magnus' new novel
is out?'--now I realised that by nine out of every ten men and five out
of every ten women the literary page in the paper is turned over with
exactly the same impatience with which I turn over the betting columns.
Anyway, why not? ... perfectly right. And then by this time I'd seen my
old books, often enough, lying scattered amongst dusty piles in
second-hand shops marked, 'All this lot 6d.' Hundreds and hundreds of
six-shilling novels, dirty, degraded, ashamed ... I'd ask, sometimes,
when I was very young, for my own works. 'What's the name? What?
Magnus?--No, don't stock him. No demand. We could get you a copy,
sir...' There it is. Why not laugh at it? I was doing perhaps the most
useless thing in the world. A commonplace little water-colour, hung on