I almost think I can do so.' 'How ?' 'That half-year abroad, and the extraordinary shock of happiness which followed at once upon it, have disturbed the balance of my nature.
It was adjusted to circumstances of hardship, privation, struggle.
A temperament like mine can't pass through such a violent change of conditions without being greatly affected; I have never since been the man I was before I left England.

The stage I had then reached was the result of a slow and elaborate building up; I could look back and see the processes by which I had grown from the boy who was a mere bookworm to the man who had all but succeeded as a novelist.

It was a perfectly natural, sober development.

But in the last two years and a half I can distinguish no order.

In living through it, I have imagined from time to time that my powers were coming to their ripest; but that was mere delusion.