ree from my grasp and turned away; his nervous
fingers plucked unconsciously at his evening tie until it was loosened
and the ends hung dissolutely over his shirt front.

"You're very good, Hilary," said he, looking at every spot in the room
except my eyes. "If I could tell you, I would. But it's an enormous
canvas. I could give you no idea--" The furrow deepened between his
brows--"If I told you the scheme you would get about the same dramatic
impression as if you read, say, the letter R, in a dictionary. I'm
putting into this novel," he flickered his fingers in front of
me--"everything that ever happened in human life."

I regarded him in some wonder.

"My dear fellow," said I, "you can't compress a Liebig's Extract of
Existence between the covers of a six-shilling novel."

"I can," said he, "I can!" He thumped my writing table, so that all the
loose brass and glass on it rattled. "And by God! I'm going to do it."

"But, my dearest friend," I expostulated, "this is absurd. It's
megalomania--_la folie des grandeurs_."

"It's the divinest folly in the world," said he.

He threw a cigar stump into the fireplace and poured himself out and
drank a stiff whisky and soda. Then he laughed in imitation of his
familiar self.

"You dear prim old prig of a Hilary, don't worry. It's all going to come
straight. When the novel of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth
centuries is published I guess you'll be proud of me. And now,
good-night."

He laughed, waved his arm in a cavalier gesture and went from the room,
slamming the door masterfully behind him.

CHAPTER IX

We kept the unreasonable pair at Northlands as long as we could, doing
all that lay in our power to restore Adrian's idiotically impaired
health. I motored him about the county; I took him to golf, a pastime at
which I do not excel; and I initiated him into the invigorating
mysteries of playing at robbers with Susan. We gave a carefully selected
dinner-party or two, and accepted on his behalf a few discreet
invitations. At these entertainments--whether at Northlands or
elsewhere--we caused it to be understood that the lion, being sick,
should not be asked to roar.

"It's so trying for him," said Doria, "when people he doesn't know come
up and gush over 'The Diamond Gate'--especially now when his nerves are
on edge."

On the occasion of our second dinner-party, the guests having been
forewarned of the famous man's idiosyncrasies, no reference