spent that. One thing particularly annoyed me just
about this time, and that was his free way of borrowing my clothes when
they fitted him. Vests and ties especially. You may think it a trivial
matter, but to me there was something exasperating in seeing one's
brother on a park seat in the dusk, with his girl's head leaning on
one's own fancy vest! He would just shy whatever he had borrowed on the
bed and leave me to pick the hair off it. What they call a _Superman_, I
believe, nowadays. I had another name for him.

"Apart from these annoyances, I was sliding along a well-oiled groove in
life. It generally happens that a young man in such a position as mine
marries and settles down for good. Now it may have been that my
brother's wholesale dealings with girls threw me to the other extreme. I
don't think that had much to do with it. I think, now, that I had a
natural bend towards Culture.

"Don't misunderstand me," said Mr. Carville. "I use that word without
any doubt of what it means. I know George Du Maurier's sneers. Culture
means an instinct for the best. I had that. I have it now.

"I don't say that culture is opposed to marriage. That would be
nonsense. But it may seriously interfere with marriage. A young man in
the twenties has no irresistible desire for matrimony. As a rule I
mean. And if sport or business or, as in my case, study, takes up his
attention, he will put it off for a while. That's what happened to me. I
had access to books. I had an easy job and no great responsibility. I
knew nothing about the world really; I only read about it in books. It
seemed to me a splendid thing to be a learned man. I became a book-worm,
reading several hours a day. What was I aiming at? Upon my soul I can't
say. It was just blind instinct leading me on to read the books that
since then have become part of me.

"My work was, as I said, light. The firm I was with were specialists in
certain machinery, and I was assistant to the London manager. I had to
plan out and make estimates for various plants, and travel about the
south of England getting orders and superintending erection. I can tell
you it just suited me, those journeys by train. I always had my book
with me, and as soon as I had been over a job, I forgot all about
contracts and went back to Pater, or Gibbon or Flaubert or Emerson,
whoever I happened to be reading. In the evenings I used to try and
imitate what I had read.

"But what could I write? What did I kn