“This is too much!” he cried at first, “I can stand a good deal, Grizel, but there was once a worm that turned at last, you know.  Take care, madam, take care.  Oh, but you are a charming lady; you can decide everything for everybody, can’t you!  What delicious letters you write, something unexpected in everyone of them!  There are poor dogs of men, Grizel, who open their letters from their loves knowing exactly what will be inside—­words of cheer, words of love, of confidence, of admiration, which help them as they sit into the night at their work, fighting for fame that they may lay it at their loved one’s feet.  Discouragement, obloquy, scorn, they get in plenty from others, but they are always sure of her,—­do you hear, my original Grizel?—­those other dogs are always sure of her.  Hurrah!  Grizel, I was happy, I was actually honoured, it was helping me to do better and better, when you quickly put an end to all that.  Hurrah, hurrah!”

I feel rather sorry for him.  If he had not told her about his book it was because she did not and never could understand what compels a man to write one book instead of another.  “I had no say in the matter; the thing demanded of me that I should do it, and I had to do it.  Some must write from their own experience, they can make nothing of anything else; but it is to me like a chariot that won’t budge; I have to assume a character, Grizel, and then away we go.  I don’t attempt to explain how I write, I hate to discuss it; all I know is that those who know how it should be done can never do it.  London is overrun with such, and everyone of them is as cock-sure as you.  You have taken everything else, Grizel; surely you might leave me my books.”

Yes, everything else, or nearly so.  He put upon the table all the feathers he had extracted since his return to London, and they did make some little show, if less than it seemed to him.  That little adventure in the park; well, if it started wrongly, it but helped to show the change in him, for he had determinedly kept away from Mrs. Jerry’s house.  He had met her once since the book came out, and she had blushed exquisitely when referring to it, and said:  “How you have suffered!  I blame myself dreadfully.”  Yes, and there was an unoccupied sofa near by, and he had not sat down on it with her and continued the conversation.  Was not that a feather?  And there were other ladies, and, without going into particulars, they were several feathers between them.  How doggedly, to punish himself, he had stuck to the company of men, a sex that never interested him!

“But all that is nothing.  I am beyond the pale, I did so monstrous a thing that I must die for it.  What was this dreadful thing?  When I saw you with that glove I knew you loved me, and that you thought I loved you, and I had not the heart to dash your joy.  You don’t know it, but that was the crime for which I must be exterminated, fiend that I am!”