There was to be an important tea-meeting at the Munster Park Chapel¹ on the next Saturday afternoon but one, and tea was to be on the tables at six o'clock. The gathering² had some connection with an attempt on the part of the Wesleyan Connexion to destroy the vogue³ of Confucius in China. Mrs. Knight⁴ and Aunt Annie had charge of the department of sandwiches, and they asked Henry whether he should be present at the entertainment. They were not surprised, however, when he answered that the exigencies⁵ of literary composition would make his attendance impossible. They lauded⁶ his self-denial, for Henry's literary work was quite naturally now the most important and the most exacting⁷ work in the world, the crusade against Confucius not excepted. Henry wrote to Geraldine and invited her to dine with him at the Louvre Restaurant on that Saturday night, and Geraldine replied that she should be charmed. Then Henry changed his tailor, and could not help blushing when he gave his order to the new man, who had a place in Conduit Street and a way of looking at the clothes Henry wore that reduced those neat garments to shapeless and shameful⁸ rags.  
The first fatal steps in a double life having been irrevocably taken, Henry drew a long breath, and once more seriously addressed himself to book number two. But ideas obstinately⁹ refused to show themselves above the horizon. And yet nothing had been left undone¹⁰ which ought to have been done in order to persuade ideas to arrive. The whole domestic existence of the house in Dawes Road revolved¹² on Henry's precious brain as on a pivot¹³. The drawing-room had not only been transformed into a study; it had been rechristened 'the study.' And in speaking of the apartment to each other or to Sarah, Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie employed a vocal¹⁴ inflection of peculiar¹⁵ impressiveness. Sarah entered the study with awe¹¹, the ladies with pride. Henry sat in it nearly every night and laboured hard, with no result whatever. If the ladies ventured to question him about his progress, he replied with false gaiety that they must ask him again in a month or so; and they smiled in sure anticipation¹⁶ of the beautiful thing that was in store for them and the public.
 
He had no one to consult in his dilemma¹⁷. Every morning he received several cuttings, chiefly of an amiable¹⁸ character, about himself from the daily and weekly press; he was a figure in literary circles; he had actually declined two invitations to be interviewed; and yet he knew no more of literary circles than Sarah did. His position struck him as curious, bizarre, and cruel. He sometimes felt that the history of the last few months was a dream from which he would probably wake up by falling heavily out of bed, so unreal did the events seem. One day, when he was at his wits' end, he saw in a newspaper an advertisement of a book entitled How to become a Successful Novelist, price half-a-crown. Just above it was an advertisement of the thirty-eighth thousand of Love in Babylon. He went into a large bookseller's shop in the Strand¹⁹ and demanded How to become a Successful Novelist. The volume had to be searched for, and while he was waiting Henry's eyes dwelt on a high pile of Love in Babylon, conspicuously²⁰ placed near the door. Two further instalments of the Satin Library had been given to the world since Love in Babylon, but Henry noted²¹ with satisfaction that no excessive prominence²² was accorded to them in that emporium of literature. He paid the half-crown and pocketed How to become a Successful Novelist with a blush, just as if the bookseller had been his new tailor. He had determined²³, should the bookseller recognise him—a not remote contingency—to explain that he was buying How to become a Successful Novelist on behalf of a young friend. However, the suspicions of the bookseller happened not to be aroused, and henc............