And then the thought that I had unconsciously feared and repressed since I had left the farm, broke through all these artificial abstractions and forced itself upon my attention.  I struggled against it vainly for a few seconds and then braced myself to meet the realisation of my own failure.  For it was that shadow which had been stalking me since Anne had so obliquely criticised my comedy.  And it seemed to me now that her last strange expression as she left the room, that look of pity and regret, had all too surely indicated the certainty that she—­I faced it with a kind of bitter despair—­that she despised me.  I was “well-off.”  I belonged to the Jervaises’ class.  She had flung those charges at me contemptuously before she had finally dismissed my one futile claim to distinction by classing me among the writers of that artificial English comedy which had not even the redeeming virtue of wit.

Not once in that long conversation with her had she shown the sudden spark of recognition that had so wonderfully lighted my parting with her in the night.  She had given me her confidence about her family affairs because she counted me as a new ally, however ineffective, coming in unexpectedly to fight against the Jervaises.  She had acknowledged my worship of her because she was too clear-sighted and too honest to shirk my inevitable declaration.  But I could not doubt that she rated me as unworthy of her serious attention.  Her whole attitude proclaimed that her one instant of reaching out towards me had been a mistake; one of the many impulses that continually blossomed and died in her close intercourse with the spirit of life.

And I could not blame her for her contempt of me.  I despised myself.  I was a man without a serious interest.  I had escaped vice, but I had always lived among surface activities.  My highest ambition after I left Cambridge had been to have one of my foolish plays mounted in a West-End theatre.  I had wanted to be talked about, to be a social success.  And I had achieved that ambition without much difficulty.  I had had an independent income—­left me by my father who had died when I was in my second year at Jesus—­only three hundred a year, but enough for me to live upon without working.  I had gone often to the theatre in those days, and had scraped up an acquaintance with a middle-aged actor, whose chief occupation had been the stage-managing of new productions.  With his help I had studied stagecraft by attending rehearsals, the best possible school for a would-be dramatist.  And my first accepted play had been written in collaboration with him.  It had not been a great success, but I had gained invaluable experience, and, after that, success had come to me rapidly and easily.  I found that I had the knack of writing pleasant little artificial comedies.  None of them had run for longer than eight months, and I had only written five in all, but they had made me comparatively rich.  At that time my investments alone were bringing me in nearly two thousand a year.