I couldn't say, "Dear, _dear_ Delancey, please be your
old self and never, never, whatever you do, write another 'good' book,"
so I confessed that a question mark _would_ look very nice, but that I
still thought that "Whither" sounded rather like a religious tract.

"Well, we must think it over," he said.

A week later, he announced to me in a tone which indicated clearly that
my opinion was only wanted if it was approval, "I have decided to call
my book 'Transition.'"

"I always like single word titles," I said.

"No one will read it," he said. "One bares one's soul to the public and
they throw stones at it. But at any rate, now I can hold my head high."

I didn't laugh, but it was the effort of a lifetime. Dear Delancey was
so very absurd as a self-made martyr. It was somehow impossible for him
to give an impression of having been persecuted for righteousness'
sake. His shiny, rosy face had never looked rounder, his trousers had
never been more perfect or his shoes more polished. And there were still
the same little outbursts of childish prosperity, his watch, his
tie-pin, his links were all redolent of a vitality that had ever been
just the least little bit blatant.

"Delancey," I said, "I want you to have just the sort of success you
want for yourself."

"Thank you," he said, wondering if I knew what I was talking about.

And then, one day, a proof copy of Delancey's book arrived. I looked at
the paper cover. It was bright orange with "Transition" slanting upwards
in immense black letters. "Very arresting," I could hear the publisher
saying. Gingerly I unwrapped it. Underneath, it was sober black linen,
with bright blue lettering still on the cross. I sat with it in my
hands, feeling limp and will-less. But, at last, I pulled myself
together. I read the dedication, "To those who died." I saw that there
were 600 pages, big pages crowded with words. And then, saying to
myself, "It is no good putting it off," I began to read. Delancey's book
was certainly not at all like his stories. It was very nearly rather a
good book and it was quite extraordinarily dull. The social structure
played a role of deadly relentless magnitude. It began (before the War)
as an immense iron scaffolding and ended sprawling in the foreground,
torn up by the roots. In the clutches of this gigantic monster, the two
chief characters not unnaturally reduced by comparison with their
surroundings to the proportion of pygmies in their turn,