ther appalling discoveries about human life and the
final discovery was that there is no Devil--no, not even such a thing
as a bad man.

"One pleasant Saturday afternoon Lucian said to him, 'I am going to
take you to see the Bloggs.' 'The what?' said the unhappy man. 'The
Bloggs,' said the other, darkly. Naturally assuming that it was the
name of a public-house he reluctantly followed his friend. He came to
a small front-garden; if it was a public-house it was not a
businesslike one. They raised the latch--they rang the bell (if the
bell was not in the close time just then). No flower in the pots
winked. No brick grinned. No sign in Heaven or earth warned him. The
birds sang on in the trees. He went in.

"The first time he spent an evening at the Bloggs there was no one
there. That is to say there was a worn but fiery little lady in a
grey dress who didn't approve of 'catastrophic solutions of social
problems.' That, he understood, was Mrs. Blogg. There was a long,
blonde, smiling young person who seemed to think him quite off his
head and who was addressed as Ethel. There were two people whose
meaning and status he couldn't imagine, one of whom had a big nose
and the other hadn't. . . . Lastly, there was a Juno-like creature in
a tremendous hat who eyed him all the time half wildly, like a shying
horse, because he said he was quite happy. . . .

"But the second time he went there he was plumped down on a sofa
beside a being of whom he had a vague impression that brown hair grew
at intervals all down her like a caterpillar. Once in the course of
conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as
plainly as if he had read it in a book: 'If I had anything to do with
this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she
would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me:
if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she
would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget
me. I may never see her again. Goodbye.' It was all said in a flash:
but it was all said. . . .

"Two years, as they say in the playbills, is supposed to elapse. And
here is the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the
sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering
record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he
has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often
been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he i