r six masterpieces. I
described these masterpieces to them in outline, with a suggestive
detail dashed in here and there to show how they would be finished.
Nothing is easier than to describe unwritten literary masterpieces
in outline; but by that time I had thoroughly convinced my audience
and myself, and we looked upon these things as completed books. The
atmosphere was charged with the spirit of high endeavour, of
wonderful accomplishment. I heard the Englishman breathing deeply,
and through the dusk I was aware of the eyes of Monica, the wide,
vague eyes of a young girl in which youth can find exactly what it
pleases.

It is a good thing to be great once or twice in our lives, and that
night I was wise enough to depart before the inevitable anti-climax.
At the gate the Englishman pressed me warmly by the hand and begged
me to honour his house with my presence again. His wife echoed the
wish, and Monica looked at me with those vacant eyes, that but a few
years ago I would have charged with the wine of my song. As I stood
in the tram on my way back to Brussels I felt like a man recovering
from a terrible debauch, and I knew that the brief hour of my pride
was over, to return, perhaps, no more. Work was impossible to a man
who had expressed considerably more than he had to express, so I went
into a cafe where there was a string band to play sentimental music
over the corpse of my genius. Chance took me to a table presided over
by a waiter I singularly detested, and the last embers of my
greatness enabled me to order my drink in a voice so passionate that
he looked at me aghast and fled. By the time he returned with my hock
the tale was finished, and I tried to buy his toleration with an
enormous _pourboire_.

No; I will return to that house on the hill above Woluwe no more, not
even to see Monica standing on tiptoe to pick her roses. For I have
left a giant's robe hanging on a peg in the hall, and I would not
have those amiable people see how utterly incapable I am of filling
it under normal conditions. I feel, besides, a kind of sentimental
tenderness for this illusion fated to have so short a life. I am no
Herod to slaughter babies, and it pleases me to think that it lingers
yet in that delightful house with the books and the old furniture and
Monica, even though I myself shall probably never see it again, even
though the Englishman watches the publishers' announcements for the
masterpieces that will never appear.