worked from
happiness to the self-conscious misery which is the only true state of
grace.

"I have chosen a man and a woman, neither of them in any way
exceptional," wrote Delancey in the preface and though this was
undoubtedly so, they seemed to me truer to fiction than to life. No, the
merits of the book had nothing to do with the characters, they lay in
the descriptions of the English countryside, of village life, of London
traffic, of the Armistice, of an Albert Hall meeting. There was a close
observation of detail and that pictorial sense which is Delancey's one
gift and which he relentlessly suppressed whenever he could,
nevertheless forced its way out here and there. The canvas seemed to me
immense. Politicians and preachers, workers and capitalists, artists and
philistines, "good" women and prostitutes, soldiers and conscientious
objectors jostled one another in the melee. Bloomsbury, Westminster,
Chelsea and Mayfair each had its appointed place, while race-courses and
night-clubs alternated with mining villages and methodist chapels. But,
unlike Delancey's other stories, the soldiers had no V.C.'s and the
workers didn't touch their caps. My eyes ached and my brain tired as I
read on, but I forced myself forward with the thought that no one else
in the world would reach the end.

Then the reviews began. I felt a little nervous but one seemed more
glowing than the last. Finally, a notice appeared two columns long
entitled "A Social Document" which ended with the words, "We venture to
predict that this book will be read 100 years hence as a truer picture
of the England of to-day than most of the histories that are being
written." Delancey was frightfully pleased, naturally. With child-like
joy he showed me cuttings from intellectual literary papers. His book
was even mentioned in a leading article and formed the topic of a
sermon.

"Think of reaching a pulpit," he exclaimed exultantly. "Of course, I
know I've lost my old public but I've found my soul."

"People talk to me of their work now," he told me another time; "in old
days, they never thought me one of themselves. I was a story teller, not
an artist."

And then it was that an extraordinary thing happened--"Transition" began
to sell. It was quoted and talked about until the snowball of fame,
steadily gathering momentum, started rolling down-hill to the general
public. The sales went up and up and up. The circulation reached
100,000 and soon after, 150,