start with, just as the harmonies which the musician awakes are all dormant in his throbbing strings.  I have created nothing, only perceived and represented phenomena.  I have gained no sensibility, no patience, no wisdom in the process.  I know no more of the secret of life and love, than before I wrote my book.  I am only like a scientific investigator who has discovered certain delicate processes, subtle laws at work.  They were there all the time; the temptation of the investigator and of the writer alike is to yield to the delusion that he has made them, by discerning and naming them.  As for the style, which is highly praised, it has not been made by effort.  It is myself.  I have never written for any other reason than because I liked writing.  It has been a pleasure to overcome difficulties, to make my way round obstacles, to learn how to express the vague an intangible thing.  But I deserve no credit for this; I should deserve credit if I had made myself a good writer out of a bad one; but I could always write, and I am not a better writer, only a more practised one.  There is no satisfaction there.

And then, too, I find myself overshadowed by the thought that I do not want to do worse, to go downhill, to decline.  I do not feel at all sure that I can write a better book, or so good a one indeed.  I should dislike failing far more than I like having succeeded.  To have reached a certain standard makes it incumbent on one that one should not fall below that standard; and no amount of taking pains will achieve that.  It can only be done through a sort of radiant felicity of mood, which is really not in my power to count upon.  I was happy, supremely happy, when I was writing the book.  I lighted upon a fine conception, and it was the purest joy to see the metal trickle firmly from the furnace into the mould.  Can I make such a mould again?  Can I count upon the ingots piled in the fierce flame?  Can I reckon upon the same temperamental glow?  I do not know—­I fear not.

Here is the net result—­that I have become a sort of personage in the world of letters.  Do I desire it?  Yes, in a sense I do, but in a sense I do not.  I do not want money, I do not wish for public appearances.  I have no social ambitions.  To be pointed out as the distinguished novelist is distinctly inconvenient.  People will demand a certain standard of talk, a certain brilliance, which I am not in the least capable of giving them.  I want to sit at my ease at the banquet of life, not to be ushered to the highest rooms.  I prefer interesting and pleasant people to important and majestic persons.  Perhaps if I were more simple-minded, I should not care about the matter at all; just be grateful for the increased warmth and amenity of life—­but I am not simple-minded, and I hate not fulfilling other people’s expectations.  I am not a prodigal, full-blooded, royal sort of person at all.  I am not conscious of greatness, but far more of emptiness.  I do not wish to seem pretentious.  I have got