and added, "L'Uomo Invisible. . . . Do you remember?"

But Mr. Wells' "The Invisible Man" made an extremely marked impression on Conrad, as indeed it did on the writer. So it deserved to. Indeed, as far as memory serves, "The Invisible Man", the end of the "Sea Lady" and some phrases that that book contained, and two short stories called "The Man Who Could Work Miracles" and "Fear", made up at that date all the English writing that, acting as it were as a junta, we absolutely admired. Later there came the stories of Mr. Cunninghame Graham, the writing of W. H. Hudson and-with reservations on the part of Conrad for the later novels-the work of Henry James.

It was as if, when we considered any other English writer's work, we always in the end said, "Ah, but do you remember 'Ce Cochon de Morin'?" or the casquette of Charles Bovary, according to the type of work undergoing commendation. After reading the passage, say, of the pavior striking with the spade at the invisibility flying past him from "The Invisible Man", or the episode of the turning over of the lamp and the burning downwards, from "The Man Who Could Work Mira

These pieces were authentic, in construction, in language and in the architectural position occupied by them in the book or story-in the progression of the effect!

Mr. Wells has recorded that he was aware that at this date there was a conspiracy going on at the Pent against himself and against British literature. Against British literature there was, if you choose to call it so; against Mr. Wells the extent of our machinations is as recorded above.

Conrad had odd, formal notions of how one should proceed in the life literary. As far as he was concerned the purpose of our call on Mr. Wells was to announce to the world of letters that we were engaged in collaboration. To the writer this was just exactly a matter of indifference except for a not materially pronounced disinclination to pay calls anywhere or at any time. But Conrad liked proceedings of a State nature. He would have liked the driving in a barouche to pay calls on Academicians such as is practised by candidates for membership of the French Academy. And exceedingly vivid in the writer's mind is the feeling he had, as we drove down the sloping railway bridge above Sandling Junction. He was like a

brown paper parcel on a seat beside a functionary in a green uniform, decorated with golden palm leaves and a feathered cocked hat.

We were then going over the third draft of the second part of "Romance" and had at last finally and psychologically decided that the book would eventually go on. Of this the writer is certain. He is certain because the exact image and air of that time came back to him suddenly whilst making a very minute recension of the text of the French translation of "Romance." The writer was in mid-ocean on the deck of a liner, reading very meticulously the translation of an episode which related how, on a blue night in Kingston Vale, John Kemp knocked down, in the presence of the Admiral of the Fleet in the Jamaica waters, a Mr. Topnambo, member of the Governor's Council, who wore white trousers that glimmered in the half-light. . . . There were on that upper deck in the sunlight a number of New York Jews playing pinocle and a number of Washington flappers reading novels. But the writer heard his own voice as, in the low parlour of the Pent, he read aloud the passage that concerned Mr. Topnambo, the blue night, the white trousers, the barouches standing in the moonlight waiting for Admiral Rowley and his intoxicated following to

take the road. And then Conrad, interrupting... "By Jove," he said, "it's a third person who is writing!"

The psychology of that moment is perfectly plain to the writer. Conrad interrupted with a note of relief in his voice. He had found a formula to justify collaboration in general and our collaboration. Until then we had struggled tacitly each for our own note in writing. With the coming of blue nights, the moon, palms and the brilliant lights of the inn reflected down the river, Conrad saw the possibilities that there were for his own exotic note in the story. Above all, with the coming of politics; for John Kemp, in coming to blows with Mr. Topnambo, member of the Governor's Council, then and there identified himself with the party in the island of Jamaica that at that date desired annexation by the United States.

This at once made our leading character handleable by Conrad. John Kemp merely kidnapped by pirates and misjudged by the judicial bench of our country was not so vastly attractive, but a John Kemp who was in addition a political refugee, suspect of High Treason and victim of West India merchants. . . . That was squeezing the last drop of blood out of the subject. . .

The differences in our temperaments were sufficiently well marked. Conrad was brave: he was for inclusion and hang the consequences. The writer, more circumspect, was for ever on the watch to suppress the melodramatic incident and the sounding phrase. So, till that psychological moment, the writer doing most of the first drafting, Conrad had been perpetually crying, "Give! Give!" The writer was to give one more, and one more, and again one more turn to the screw that sent the rather listless John Kemp towards an inevitable gallows. The actual provision of intrigue in 1820 between England and Jamaica was the writer's business. Conrad contented himself with saying, "You must invent. You have got to make that fellow live perpetually under the shadow of the gallows." In the original draft of the book John Kemp had been the mere second mate of a merchant ship going out to Jamaica in the ordinary course of his business of following the sea. But in the second draft he was mixed up with smugglers and fled from Hythe beach in the moonlight with the Bow Street runners hot on his trail- already a candidate for the professional attentions of the hangman. In that second draft, however, he was in Jamaica, still merely a planter's apprenticeinsufficiently hangable. There had to be more inevitability in the shape of invention. The writer