nificent idea. Strange that it should have occurred
not to him, but to Lois! A disconcerting girl, Lois! She had said that
he looked twenty-five. He liked that. Why should he not enter for the
competition himself? He would enter for it. The decision was made, as
usual without consulting anybody; instinct was his sole guide. Failure
in the final examination was beside the point. Moreover, though he had
sworn never to sit again, he could easily sit again in December; he
could pass the exam, on his head. He might win the competition; to be
even in the selected first six or ten would rank as a glorious
achievement. But why should he not win outright? He was lucky, always
had been lucky. It was essential that he should win outright. It was
essential that he should create vast and grandiose structures, that he
should have both artistic fame and worldly success. He could not wait
long for success. He required luxury. He required a position enabling
him to meet anybody and everybody on equal terms, and to fulfil all his
desires.

He would not admit that he was too young for the enterprise. He was not
too young. He refused to be too young. And indeed he felt that he had
that very night become adult, and that a new impulse, reducing all
previous impulses to unimportance, had inspired his life. He owed the
impulse to the baffling Lois. Marguerite would never have given him such
an impulse. Marguerite had no ambition either for herself or for him.
She was profoundly the wrong girl for him. He admitted his error
candidly, with the eagerness of youth. He had no shame about the
blunder. And the girl's environment was wrong for him also. What had he
to do with Chelsea? Chelsea was a parish; it was not the world. He had
been gravely disappointed in Chelsea. Marguerite had no shimmer of
romance. She was homely. And she was content with her sphere. And she
was not elegant; she had no kind of smartness; who would look twice at
her? And she was unjust, she was unfair. She had lacerated his highly
sensitive pride. She had dealt his conceit a frightful wound. He would
not think of it.

And in fact he could ignore the wound in the exquisite activity of
creating town halls for mighty municipalities. He drew plans with
passion and with fury; he had scores of alternative schemes; he was a
god fashioning worlds. Having drawn plans, he drew elevations and
perspectives; he rushed to the files (rushed--because he was in haste to
reach the goal) and