He liked that.  Why should he not enter for the competition himself?  He would enter for it.  The decision was made, as usual without consulting anybody; instinct was his sole guide.  Failure in the final examination was beside the point.  Moreover, though he had sworn never to sit again, he could easily sit again in December; he could pass the exam, on his head.  He might win the competition; to be even in the selected first six or ten would rank as a glorious achievement.  But why should he not win outright?  He was lucky, always had been lucky.  It was essential that he should win outright.  It was essential that he should create vast and grandiose structures, that he should have both artistic fame and worldly success.  He could not wait long for success.  He required luxury.  He required a position enabling him to meet anybody and everybody on equal terms, and to fulfil all his desires.

He would not admit that he was too young for the enterprise.  He was not too young.  He refused to be too young.  And indeed he felt that he had that very night become adult, and that a new impulse, reducing all previous impulses to unimportance, had inspired his life.  He owed the impulse to the baffling Lois.  Marguerite would never have given him such an impulse.  Marguerite had no ambition either for herself or for him.  She was profoundly the wrong girl for him.  He admitted his error candidly, with the eagerness of youth.  He had no shame about the blunder.  And the girl’s environment was wrong for him also.  What had he to do with Chelsea?  Chelsea was a parish; it was not the world.  He had been gravely disappointed in Chelsea.  Marguerite had no shimmer of romance.  She was homely.  And she was content with her sphere.  And she was not elegant; she had no kind of smartness; who would look twice at her?  And she was unjust, she was unfair.  She had lacerated his highly sensitive pride.  She had dealt his conceit a frightful wound.  He would not think of it.

And in fact he could ignore the wound in the exquisite activity of creating town halls for mighty municipalities.  He drew plans with passion and with fury; he had scores of alternative schemes; he was a god fashioning worlds.  Having drawn plans, he drew elevations and perspectives; he rushed to the files (rushed—­because he was in haste to reach the goal) and studied afresh the schedules of accommodation for other municipal buildings that had been competed for in the past.  Much as he hated detail, he stooped rather humbly to detail that night, and contended with it in all honesty.  He worked for hours before he thought of lighting a cigarette.