uld gladly turn; he had been flurried, he had been
incompetent, he had been ridiculously incompetent, and it seemed to him
that life was a string of desolating inadequacies and that he would
never smile again.

The probable reception of Lady Harman by her husband never came within
his imaginative scope. Nor did the problems of social responsibility
that Lady Harman had been trying to put to him exercise him very
greatly. The personal disillusionment was too strong for that.

About half-past four a faint ray of comfort came with the consideration
that after all a certain practical incapacity is part of the ensemble of
a literary artist, and then he found himself wondering what flowers of
wisdom Montaigne might not have culled from such a day's experience; he
began an imitative essay in his head and he fell asleep upon this at
last at about ten minutes past five in the morning.

There were better things than this in the composition of Mr. Brumley, we
shall have to go deep into these reserves before we have done with him,
but when he had so recently barked the shins of his self-esteem they had
no chance at all.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

LADY HARMAN LEARNS ABOUT HERSELF

Sec.1

So it was that the great and long incubated quarrel between Lady Harman
and her husband broke into active hostilities.

In spite of my ill-concealed bias in favour of Lady Harman I have to
confess that she began this conflict rashly, planlessly, with no
equipment and no definite end. Particularly I would emphasize that she
had no definite end. She had wanted merely to establish a right to go
out by herself occasionally, exercise a certain choice of friends, take
on in fact the privileges of a grown-up person, and in asserting that
she had never anticipated that the participation of the household would
be invoked, or that a general breach might open between herself and her
husband. It had seemed just a definite little point at issue, but at Sir
Isaac's angry touch a dozen other matters that had seemed safely remote,
matters she had never yet quite properly thought about, had been drawn
into controversy. It was not only that he drew in things from outside;
he evoked things within herself. She discovered she was disposed to
fight not simply to establish certain liberties for herself but
also--which had certainly not been in her mind before--to keep her
husband away from herself. Something latent in the situation had
surprised her with this