The Figure in the Carpet. Генри Джеймс

way I’ve carried it out is the thing in life I think a bit well of myself for.”

      I had a pause.  “Don’t you think you ought—just a trifle—to assist the critic?”

      “Assist him?  What else have I done with every stroke of my pen?  I’ve shouted my intention in his great blank face!”  At this, laughing out again, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show the allusion wasn’t to my personal appearance.

      “But you talk about the initiated.  There must therefore, you see, be initiation.”

      “What else in heaven’s name is criticism supposed to be?”  I’m afraid I coloured at this too; but I took refuge in repeating that his account of his silver lining was poor in something or other that a plain man knows things by.  “That’s only because you’ve never had a glimpse of it,” he returned.  “If you had had one the element in question would soon have become practically all you’d see.  To me it’s exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney.  Besides, the critic just isn’t a plain man: if he were, pray, what would he be doing in his neighbour’s garden?  You’re anything but a plain man yourself, and the very raison d’être of you all is that you’re little demons of subtlety.  If my great affair’s a secret, that’s only because it’s a secret in spite of itself—the amazing event has made it one.  I not only never took the smallest precaution to keep it so, but never dreamed of any such accident.  If I had I shouldn’t in advance have had the heart to go on.  As it was, I only became aware little by little, and meanwhile I had done my work.”

      “And now you quite like it?” I risked.

      “My work?”

      “Your secret.  It’s the same thing.”

      “Your guessing that,” Vereker replied, “is a proof that you’re as clever as I say!”  I was encouraged by this to remark that he would clearly be pained to part with it, and he confessed that it was indeed with him now the great amusement of life.  “I live almost to see if it will ever be detected.”  He looked at me for a jesting challenge; something far within his eyes seemed to peep out.  “But I needn’t worry—it won’t!”