Of course it was not to be thought of that he should give up his Lankester, and the first thing to be done was to muzzle Furnival\'s young men. I went to Furny the next day and told him plainly that his joke had gone too far, that he knew what Burton was and that it wasn\'t a bit of good trying to force his hand.

And then that evening I went on to Antigone.

She said I was just in time; and when I asked her "for what?" she said—to give them my advice about her father\'s "Memoirs."

I told her that was precisely what I\'d come for; and she asked if Grevill had sent me.

I said no, he hadn\'t. I\'d come for myself.

"Because," she said, "he\'s sent them back." [Pg 213]

I stared at her. For one moment I thought that he had done the only sane thing he could do, that he had made my horrible task unnecessary.

She explained. "He wants Mamma and me to go over them again and see if there aren\'t some things we\'d better leave out."

"Oh," I said, "is that all?"

I must have struck her as looking rather queer, for she said, "All? Why, whatever did you think it was?"

With a desperate courage I dashed into it there where I saw my opening.

"I thought he\'d given it up."

"Given it up?"

Her dismay showed me what I had yet to go through. But I staved it off a bit. I tried half-measures.

"Well, yes," I said, "you see, he\'s frightfully driven with his Lankester book."

"But—we said—we wouldn\'t have him driven for the world. Papa can wait. He has waited."

I ignored it and the tragic implication.

"You see," I said, "Lankester\'s book\'s awfully important. It means no end to him. If he makes the fine thing of it we think he will, it\'ll place him. What\'s more, it\'ll place Lankester. He\'s still—as far as the big outside public is concerned—waiting to be placed."

"He mustn\'t wait," she said. "It\'s all right. Grevill knows. We told him he was to do Lankester first."

I groaned. "It doesn\'t matter," I said, "which he does first."

"You mean he\'ll be driven anyway?"

It was so far from what I meant that I could only stare at her and at her frightful failure to perceive.

I went at it again, as I thought, with a directness [Pg 214] that left nothing to her intelligence. I told her what I meant was that he couldn\'t do them both.

But she didn\'t see it. She just looked at me with her terrible innocence.

"You mean it\'s too much for him?"

And I tried to begin again with no, it wasn\'t exactly that—but she went on over me.

It wouldn\'t be too much for him if he didn\'t go at it so hard. He was giving himself more to do than was necessary. He\'d marked so many things for omission; and, of course, the more he left out of "Papa," the more he had to put in of his own.

"And he needn\'t," she said. "There\'s such a lot of Papa."

I knew. I scowled miserably at that. How was I going to tell her it was the whole trouble, that there was "such a lot of Papa"?

I said there was; but, on the other hand, he needed such a lot of editing.

She said that was just what they had to think about. Did he?

I remembered Burton\'s theory, and I put it to her point-blank. Had she read all of him?

She flushed slightly. No, she said, not all. But Mamma had.

"Then" (I skirmished), "you don\'t really know?"

She parried it with "Mamma knows."

And I thrust. "But," I said, "does your mother really understand?"

I saw her wince.

"Do you mean," she said, "there are things—things in it that had better be kept out?"

"No," I said, "there weren\'t any \'things\' in it——"

"There couldn\'t be," she said superbly. "Not things we\'d want to hide." [Pg 215]

I said there weren\'t. It wasn\'t "things" at all. I shut my eyes and went at it head downward.

It was, somehow, the whole thing.

"The whole thing?" she said, and I saw that I had hit her hard.

"The whole thing," I said.

She looked scared for a moment. Then she rallied.

"But it\'s the whole thing we want. He wanted it. I know he did. He wanted to be represented completely or not at all. As he stood. As he stood," she reiterated.

She had given me the word I wanted. I could do it gently now.

"That\'s it," I said. "These \'Memoirs\' won\'t represent him."

Subtlety, diabolic or divine, was given me. I went at it like a man inspired.

"They won\'t do him justice. They\'ll do him harm."

"Harm?" She breathed it with an audible fright.

"Very great harm. They give a wrong impression, an impression of—of——"

I left it to her. It sank in. She pondered it.

"You mean," she said at last, "the t............