“How can I struggle with this man when I am exhausting all my ingenuity in trying to make his book an immortal work?” Wolf placed the sheets of his manuscript carefully in order and put a heavy paperweight on the top of them. Then he set himself to curse the obscurity of his universe as he had never done before.

“Good⁠—evil? Evil⁠—good?” he thought. “Why should these old dilemmas rise up now and spoil my life, just as it is rounding itself off into a solid integrity?”

He surveyed the great shelves of Mr. Urquhart’s library much in the same mood as he had recently surveyed the circumvallation-lines of Poll’s Camp. “Come out of your grave, you wretched Redfern!” he cried under his breath. “And let’s hear what you made of it! Was it the drip-drop of this infernal indecision that sent you scampering off to Lenty Pond of an autumn evening? Did you feel a knot in your head, tightening, tightening, tightening?”