"
"Well, then, here's your question, Miss Cardinal. Why on earth did I
go on writing? . . . Simply because I couldn't help myself. Writing
was the only thing in the world that gave me happiness. I thought
too that there might be people, here and there, unknown to me who
cared for what I did. Not many of course--I soon discovered that
outside the small library set in London no one had ever heard of me.
When I was younger I had fancied that that to me fiery blazing
advertisement: "New Novel by William Magnus, author of . . ." must
cause men to stop in the street, exclaim, rush home to tell their
wives, 'Do you know Magnus' new novel is out?'--now I realised that
by nine out of every ten men and five out of every ten women the
literary page in the paper is turned over with exactly the same
impatience with which I turn over the betting columns. Anyway, why
not? . . . perfectly right. And then by this time I'd seen my old
books, often enough, lying scattered amongst dusty piles in second-
hand shops marked, 'All this lot 6d.' Hundreds and hundreds of six-
shilling novels, dirty, degraded, ashamed .
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