n the garrulity of the Dublin people by saying that they were
obliged to talk and to persist in talking because "otherwise they'd
start to think!" but he knew now that that was not an accurate
explanation, that it was an ill-natured attempt to cover up his own lack
of force.

"And that's worse than cowardice," he said to himself, "to excuse my own
funkiness by pretending that courage isn't courage!"

He remembered that he had invented a bitter phrase about Yeats one night
when he had seen the poet in a house in Dublin. "Yeats is behaving as if
he were the archangel Gabriel making the Annunciation!" he had said, and
the man to whom he had said it had laughed and asked what Henry thought
Yeats was announcing.

"A fresh revision of one of his lyrics," he had replied....

"And I'd give the world," he said now, "to be able to put on his
pontifical air!"

He had a shrinking will; his instinct in an emergency was to back away
from things. He had not got the capacity to compel men to do his bidding
by the simple force of his personality. If he succeeded in persuading
people to do things which he suggested to them he was only able to do so
after prolonged discussion, sometimes only after everything else had
failed. At Rumpell's, Gilbert had made suggestions as if they were
commands that must instantly be obeyed ... and they had been instantly
obeyed; but when Henry made suggestions, either people did not listen to
them or, having listened to them, they acted on some other suggestion,
until at last, Henry, disheartened, seldom proposed anything until the
last moment, and then he made his proposal in a way which seemed to
indicate that he thought little of it; and when some of his suggestions
were accepted and had proved, in practice, to be good, his attitude had
been, not that of the man who is absolutely sure of himself, but rather
of the man who gasps with relief because something that he thought was
very likely to be a failure, had proved to be a success.

Depression settled on him so heavily that he began to believe that he
was bound to fail in everything that he undertook to do, and when he
thought of the bundle of manuscript in his portmanteau, he had a sudden
inclination to take it out and fling it through the window of the
carriage. He had not spoken of his writing to any one except John Marsh,
and to him, he had only said that he intended to write a novel some day.
Once, indeed, he had said, "I've written quite a l