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This seemed a responsibility indeed. “You call it a little trick?”

“That’s only my little modesty. It’s really an exquisite scheme.”

“And you hold that you’ve carried the scheme out?”

“The way I’ve carried it out is the thing in life I think a bit well of myself for.”

I had a pause. “Don’t you think you ought–just a trifle–to assist the critic?”

“Assist him? What else have I done with every stroke of my pen? I’ve shouted my intention in his great blank face!” At this, laughing out again, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show the allusion wasn’t to my personal appearance.

“But you talk about the initiated. There must therefore, you see, BE initiation.”

“What else in heaven’s name is criticism supposed to be?” I’m afraid I coloured at this too; but I took refuge in repeating that his account of his silver lining was poor in something or other that a plain man knows things by. “That’s only because you’ve never had a glimpse of it,” he returned. “If you had had one the element in question would soon have become practically all you’d see. To me it’s exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney. Besides, the critic just ISN’T a plain man: if he were, pray, what would he be doing in his neighbour’s garden? You’re anything but a plain man yourself, and the very raison d’etre of you all is that you’re little demons of subtlety. If my great affair’s a secret, that’s only because it’s a secret in spite of itself–the amazing event has made it one. I not only never took the smallest precaution to keep it so, but never dreamed of any such accident. If I had I shouldn’t in advance have had the heart to go on. As it was, I only became aware little by little, and meanwhile I had done my work.”

“And now you quite like it?” I risked.

“My work?”

“Your secret. It’s the same thing.”

“Your guessing that,” Vereker replied, “is a proof that you’re as clever as I say!” I was encouraged by this to remark that he would clearly be pained to part with it, and he confessed that it was indeed with him now the great amusement of life. “I live almost to see if it will ever be detected.” He looked at me for a jesting challenge; something far within his eyes seemed to peep out. “But I needn’t worry–it won’t!”

“You fire me as I’ve never been fired,” I declared; “you make me determined to do or die.” Then I asked: “Is it a kind of esoteric message?”

His countenance fell at this–he put out his hand as if to bid me good-night. “Ah my dear fellow, it can’t be described in cheap journalese!”

I knew of course he’d be awfully fastidious, but our talk had made me feel how much his nerves were exposed. I was unsatisfied–I kept hold of his hand. “I won’t make use of the expression then,” I said, “in the article in which I shall eventually announce my discovery, though I dare say I shall have hard work to do without it. But meanwhile, just to hasten that difficult birth, can’t you give a fellow a clue?” I felt much more at my ease.

“My whole lucid effort gives him the clue–every page and line and letter. The thing’s as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It’s stuck into every volume as your foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses every word, it dots every i, it places every comma.”

I scratched my head. “Is it something in the style or something in the thought? An element of form or an element of feeling?”