Chapter 45

Lance Pybus walked along Park Lane. He had been dining at the Ermyn Club, and it had been one of the club’s literary evenings, and in the smoking-room he had been made known to an amazing little woman—one Lola Kentish—who, with the face and clothes of a country schoolmistress, had sat drinking cups of black coffee while talking to him upon literary methods. He had got himself becalmed in one of those stagnant phases when a book refuses to move, and loses its sense of sincerity. He had torn up one whole chapter. He …