If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a
kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky? Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept
your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single
beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em
out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no
temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They
deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades;
_you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but
that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine
artist!' --I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted
with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective
rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real
sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one
thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of
course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do
you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find
thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the
chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish
your 'Life.'..." I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I
might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a
start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that
years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me. IV

The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life"
came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards
"professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought
not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position
involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches
had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret
was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the
implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create,
usually in the French term, _besogne_; and he was inclined to regard the
imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as
a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than
to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching
coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had
been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or
becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand. It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very
middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking
how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it
was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my
hand had been seized and pinned down in its passage across the paper. I
can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "... _and
the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential--_" Then came that
abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly
known only in nightmare. I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was
my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For
the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had
planned a moment before. I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered
something I had been reading only a few days before--a profoundly
unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The
experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the
laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should
not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly
light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that
did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that
injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will
was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition
had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again. It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as
announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member
warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment;
then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a
little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the
paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came
a resolve--that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this
prank should not repeat it if I could possibly prevent it. But scarcely had I come, as I may say (and not without a little gush of
alarm now that it was over), to myself, when I was struck by a thought. It was a queer wild sort of thought. It fetched me out of my chair and
set me striding across the library to a lower shelf in the farthest
corner. This shelf was the shelf on which I kept my letter-files. I
stooped and ran my fingers along the backs of the dusty row. I drew out
the file for 1900, and brought it back to my writing-table. My contracts,
I ought to say, reposed in a deed-box at my agent's office; but my files
contained, in the form of my agent's letters, a sufficient record of my
business transactions. I opened the file concertina-wise, and turned to the section lettered
"R." I drew out the correspondence that related to the sale of the first
series of the _Martin Renards_. As I did so I glanced at the movable
calendar on my table. The date was January 20th. The file contained no letters for January of any significance whatever. The thought that had half formed in my brain immediately became nonsense. I replaced the letters in their compartment, and took the file back to
its shelf again. For some minutes I paced the library irresolutely; then
I decided I would work no more that night. When I gathered together my
papers I was careful to place that with the half-finished sentence on the
top, so that with the first resting of my eyes upon it on the morrow my
memory might haply be refreshed. I tried again to finish that sentence on the morrow. With certain
modifications that I need not particularise here, my experience was the
same as on the previous night. It was the same when I made the attempt on the day after that. At ten o'clock of the night of the fourth day I completed the sentence
without difficulty. I just sat down in my chair and wrote it. With equal ease I finished the chapter on professional artists. It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling
Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week
of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it.