And the rest?
The tragic rest?
His undertaking to write another novel?
Indomitable self-confidence was the keynote of the man.

Careless, casual lover of ease that he was, everything he had definitely set himself to do heretofore, he had done.
As I have said, he had got his First Class at Cambridge, to the stupefaction of his friends.

With the exception of a brilliant bar examination, he had done nothing remarkable afterwards, merely for lack of incentive.

When the incentive came, the writing of a novel to eclipse "The Diamond Gate," I am absolutely certain that he had no doubt of his capacity.
When he married, I think his sunny nature dispelled the cloud of guilt.
He looked forward with a gambler's eagerness to the autumn's work, the beginning of the apotheosis of his real imaginary self, the genius that was Adrian Boldero.

And yet, behind all this light-hearted enthusiasm, must have run a vein of cunning, invariable symptom of an unbalanced mind, which prompted secrecy, the secrecy which he had always loved to practise, and inspired him with the idea of the mysterious, secret room.