Here, on the following Saturday afternoon I found him awaiting me in a pleasant setting of books and prints and faded parental¹ furniture.

 

We dined late, and smoked and talked afterward² in his book-walled study till the terrier on the hearth-rug stood up and yawned for bed. When we took the hint and moved toward the staircase I felt, not that I had found the old Merrick again, but that I was on his track, had come across traces of his passage here and there in the thick jungle that had grown up between us. But I had a feeling that when I finally came on the man himself he might be dead....

 

As we started upstairs he turned back with one of his abrupt³ shy movements, and walked into the study.

 

“Wait a bit!” he called to me.

 

I waited, and he came out in a moment carrying a limp folio.

 

“It’s typewritten. Will you take a look at it? I’ve been trying to get to work again,” he explained, thrusting the manuscript into my hand.

 

“What? Poetry, I hope?” I exclaimed.

 

He shook his head with a gleam of derision. “No—just general considerations. The fruit of fifty years of inexperience.”

 

He showed me to my room and said good-night.

 

The following afternoon we took a long walk inland, across the hills, and I said to Merrick what I could of his book. Unluckily there wasn’t much to say. The essays were judicious⁴, polished and cultivated; but they lacked the freshness and audacity⁵ of his youthful work. I tried to conceal⁶ my opinion behind the usual generalisations, but he broke through these feints with a quick thrust to the heart of my meaning.

 

“It’s worn down—blurred? Like the figures in the Cumnors’

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