The blue lobelias, the dark-green grass-blades leaning sideways against the edge of the brown mould, as if some light faun’s-hoof had trodden them down, came to his consciousness then with such a clear revelation of something in nature purer than anything in man’s mind, that he felt a sense of nausea with regard to these lewd preciosities. What was he doing, to be employed at such a job?

If the book were ever published, none of his own stylistic inventions, such as they were, could offset the general drift of it. And what effect would that drift have? To which side of the gulf between beauty and the opposite of beauty would it draw readers?