. . . But the very essence of aristocracy, as I
conceive it, is that it does not explain nor talk about itself. . . .
"After all it doesn't matter what I am. . . . It's just a private
vexation that I haven't got where I meant to get. That does not
affect the truth I have to tell. . . .
"If one has to speak the truth with the voice of a prig, still one
must speak the truth. I have worked out some very considerable
things in my research, and the time has come when I must set them
out clearly and plainly. That is my job anyhow. My journey to
London to release Amanda will be just the end of my adolescence and
the beginning of my real life. It will release me from my last
entanglement with the fellow creatures I have always failed to make
happy. . . . It's a detail in the work. . . . And I shall go on.
"But I shall feel very like a man who goes back for a surgical
operation.
"It's very like that. A surgical operation, and when it is over
perhaps I shall think no more about it.
"And beyond these things there are great masses of work to be done.
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