000. Why people bought it and whether they
read it, I don't know, but Sydney (the heroine) and Mark Allison (the
hero) became household words and soon they were used as generic terms--a
Sydney, or an Allison, without so much as an inverted comma!

Delancey hardly ever came to see me. I imagine he was in a very divided
state of mind! He had so dreadfully wanted to be an intellectual, to be
able to rail at the base imbecile public in exquisitely select
Bloomsbury coteries, he had so resolutely determined to be a martyr, to
sacrifice himself on the altar of pure art, and somehow Mr. T.S. Eliot
and martyrdom were as far off as ever. After all, he had given up 5,000
pounds a year and V.C.'s and happy endings. Was it his fault if he was
making more money than ever and the inner circles of the unread elect
seemed more firmly closed than ever?

At this time, Delancey avoided me, but I heard that "Transition" was to
be dramatised and that the film rights had been bought. How the endless
chaotic mass, loosely held together by semi-colons, was to be moulded
into a drama or a movie was quite beyond my imagination, but evidently
some enterprising people had decided to call their play "Transition."
"Delancey must," I reflected, "be getting very rich indeed." But still
he didn't come near me, until one day I sent for him. He looked, I
thought, just a tiny bit care-worn. The all conquering light had gone
out of his eye. His boots were a little dusty and he wore no tie-pin. He
had, I suppose, become rich beyond the symptoms of prosperity.

"Well," I smiled at him to reassure him.

"It has all been very surprising, hasn't it?" he said with an
embarrassed expression.

I didn't know whether to say "yes" or "no," that I was glad or that I
was sorry.

"But it doesn't alter the quality of your book," I consoled him.

He brightened, "No," he said, "it doesn't; I am glad you said that."

We talked about other things, music and old furniture and people. He
had, he said, thought of buying a house in Chelsea. It was, I realised,
not exactly the entry he had planned but I encouraged the idea. There
was, I explained, nothing like the Thames.

And so we rambled on till he took his leave. But five minutes after his
departure I heard the bell ring. Delancey burst back into the room,

"I forgot to tell you," he said, "that 185,000 copies of 'Transition'
have sold."

VI

A MOTOR

[_To ALICE LONGWORTH_]

There is a special qualit