The sum of work seemed tremendous; it made the mind dizzy; it made George smile with terrible satisfaction at his own industry.  For he had engaged very little help.  He would have been compelled to engage more, had not the Corporation extended by one month the time for sending in.  The Corporation had behaved with singular enlightenment.  Its schedules of required accommodation (George’s copy was scored over everywhere in pencil and ink and seriously torn) were held to be admirably drawn, and its supplementary circular of answers to questions from competitors had displayed a clarity and a breadth of mind unusual in corporations.  Still more to the point, the Corporation had appointed a second assessor to act with Sir Hugh Corver.  In short, it had shown that it was under no mandarin’s thumb, and that what it really and seriously wanted was the best design that the profession could produce.  Mr. Enwright, indeed, had nearly admitted regret at having kept out of the immense affair.  John Orgreave had expressed regret with vigour and candour.  They had in the main left George alone, though occasionally at night Mr. Enwright, in the little room, had suggested valuable solutions of certain problems.  In detail he was severely critical of George’s design, and he would pour delicate satires upon the idiosyncrasy which caused the wilful boy to ‘impurify’ (a word from Enwright’s private vocabulary) a Renaissance creation with Saracenic tendencies in the treatment of arches and wall-spaces.

Nevertheless Mr. Enwright greatly respected the design in its entirety, and both he and John Orgreave (who had collected by the subterranean channels of the profession a large amount of fact and rumour about the efforts of various competitors) opined that it stood a fair chance of being among the selected six or ten whose authors would be invited to submit final designs for the final award.  George tried to be hopeful; but he could not be hopeful by trying.  It was impossible to believe that he would succeed; the notion was preposterous; yet at moments, when he was not cultivating optimism, optimism would impregnate all his being, and he would be convinced that it was impossible not to win.  How inconceivably grand!  His chief rallying thought was that he had undertaken a gigantic task and had accomplished it.  Well or ill, he had accomplished it.  He said to himself aloud: 

“I’ve done it!  I’ve done it!”

And that he actually had done it was almost incredible.  The very sheets of drawings were almost incredible.  But they existed there.  All was complete.  The declaration that the design was G.E.  Cannon’s personal work, drawn in his own office by his ordinary staff, was there, in the printed envelope officially supplied by the Corporation.  The estimate of cost and the cubing was there.  The explanatory report on the design, duly typewritten, was there.  Nothing lacked.

“I’ve done it!  I’ve done it!”