But this, of course, would never do for America where there isn’t a market for ne’er-do-wells, frayed carpets inspire no glamour, and dreamers who before the war were despised as harmless, are now damned as dangerous.  No, America must have her special line and no one better than Delancey knew how to mix the fragrance of true love with the flavour of Wall Street and serve at the right temperature.

He wasn’t proud of his writing—­or, rather, he wasn’t proud of it with every one.  In his heart of hearts, what he wanted was not the applause of the public, but the faith of a coterie, to be a martyr, misunderstood by the many, worshipped by the few.  A Bloomsbury hero, a Chelsea King!  “We confess that as a writer Mr. Delancey Woburn is altogether too rarefied for our taste.  His work is far too impregnated by the stamp of a tiny clique of rather self-conscious superintellectuals.  Reading his books, we feel as if we had suddenly entered a room full of people who know one another very well.  In other words, we feel out of it.”

What would not Delancey have given for a review that began like that!  Instead of which the best that he could hope for in “shorter notices” would be an announcement that “Mr. Woburn’s many admirers will no doubt find his last book eminently to their taste.  He provides a lavish supply of the features they are accustomed to look for in his work.”

Poor Delancey, his stories did sell so well!  And there was his flat in Grafton Street with the beautiful new taffetas curtains and the cigars that had just arrived from Havana, with his own initials on.

So from week to week he put off becoming an artist and one year (after a four-month love affair and two lacquer cabinets) he made a lecture tour in America.

“Was it a success?” I asked wearily (Delancey’s success is always such a terribly foregone conclusion).

“Tremendous,” he beamed.  “I was careful to be a little dull because then they think they’re learning something.”  But he was out of love, the flat was overcrowded, money continued to pour in and he knew terribly well that he was not making a contribution to contemporary literature.

He had always assured me at intervals that some day he would write his “real book” but I think it was after his tour in America that the dream became a project.  He burst in to tell me about it.  Delancey always begins things with a sudden noisy rush.

“Charlotte,” he said, “I have made up my mind.”

“It sounds very momentous,” I teased.  He decided years ago that I was grave, fastidious, whimsical, aloof and (I suspect) a little faded.  I have long given up fighting my own battle (to be known) because I realise that Delancey never revises the passports given to old ideas.  There is always, to him, something a little bit sacred about the accepted.  “I can’t go on with it any longer,” he explained.

“Go on with what?”

“My damned stories.”