a wall, can give happiness to heaps of people; a poor piece of music
can do a thousand things, good and bad, but an unsuccessful
novel--twenty unsuccessful novels! A whole row, with the same history
awaiting their successors ... 'We welcome a new novel by Mr. William
Magnus, who our readers will remember wrote that clever story ... The
present work seems to us at least the equal of any that have preceded
it.' ... A fortnight's advertisement--Dead silence. Some one in the
Club, 'I see you've written another book, old man. You do turn 'em
out.' A letter from a Press Agency who has never heard of one's name
before, 'A little sheaf of thin miserable cuttings.' ... The Sixpenny
Lot ... Ouf! And still I go on and shall go on until I die. Perhaps
after all I'm more justified than any of them. I'm stripped of all
reasons save the pleasure, the thrill, the torment, the hopes, the
despairs of the work itself. I've got nothing else out of it and shall
get nothing ... and therefore I'm justified. Now do you understand a
little, Miss Cardinal?"

She half understood. She understood that he was compelled to do it just
as some men are compelled to go to race meetings and just as Uncle
Mathew was compelled to drink.

But she nevertheless thought it a dreadful pity that he was unable to
stop and interest himself in something else. Then he could see it so
plainly and yet go on! She admired and at the same time pitied him.

It seemed, this private history of Mr. Magnus, at first sight so far
from Maggie's immediate concerns, her new life, her aunts, the Chapel
and the Chapel world. It was only afterwards, when she looked back,
that she was able to see that all these private affairs of private
people radiated inwards, like the spokes of a wheel, towards the
mysterious inner circle--that inner circle of which she was already
dimly aware, and of which she was soon to feel the heat and light. She
was, meanwhile, so far impressed by Mr. Magnus' confidences that she
borrowed one of his novels from Caroline, who confided to her that she
herself thought it the dullest and most tiresome of works. "To be
honest, I only read a bit of it--I don't know what it's about. I think
it's downright silly."

This book bore the mysterious title of "Dredinger." It was concerned
apparently with the experiences of a young man who, buying an empty
house in Bloomsbury, discovered a pool of water in the cellar. The
young man was called Dredinger, which seemed to