“Why do you write so often about water and about drowned people?” asked Wolf. “Your pond-elf in ‘The Slowworm’ gave me a weird feeling; and this seaweed of yours, growing out of drowned bodies⁠—”

“You needn’t go on!” interrupted Jason. “Of course, I can’t expect anyone to like my poetry who lives by copying out the liquorish thoughts of a doting old fool. We all want to be glorified. My poetry is all I’ve got and I ought never to have read it to you. I ought to have known I’d only get abuse. It’s this wanting to be glorified that’s the mistake. A person ought to be satisfied if he can get his meals three times a day, without having to dance attendance on some silly old man or some ugly old woman!”

Wolf swept this aside. “Do you have in your mind any definite people when you make the newts and tadpoles tease the pond-elf, and when you make these fish and gulls want to eat these youthful bodies?”

Jason’s face wrinkled with delight at this.