Hugh Walpole

“ My attention was first drawn to Pritchard by the visit of a little man, Meening, to our office. He was a fellow-member of the Rococo Club, and there I had met him on various occasions. He was one of those little men who can attract attention only by being constantly at your side. For months and months you hear them speak, see them move, watch them eat, listen to their sighs, their laughter, and perhaps their tears, but are nevertheless unaware that they exist. ”

“ They sat there for an hour at least, Helen Freed treating him with a wonderful mixture of attention and kindliness, with just a hint in her smiling eyes that of course this was only a game, quite an amusing one and entirely novel. Then she had to go. She was late as it was; she must meet her friend. "You'll see me again?" he said. "You will, won't you?"
"See you again!" she cried. "You're really extraordinary to-night, Guy. Is there ever a time when I'm not delighted to see you? Come and lunch with me to-morrow—you know, the same old rooms, in Walpole Street, Chelsea, one o'clock." ”

“ I have tremendous belief in human nature, and am perpetually surprised at the heroisms, unselfishness, and touching gratitude shown so often against desperate odds by my fellow-mortals. But it is not surprising that we should all enjoy a game, and if that game involves the lowering in the general estimation of some unfortunate—why, then, the higher go ourselves.
Do not think that Pritchard, the hero of this story, could really be called unfortunate. ”

“ Pritchard said rather more brusquely: "I am very sorry, sir, you've made some mistake; I have never seen you in my life before."
Brown also stiffened. "Look here, Guy, are you tight or something? Don't be a silly ass. I want to thank you for all you did for Everett; you're really wonderful, the way you take trouble——"
Pritchard's sense of his own dignity began to suffer. He rose slowly from his chair and, looking Brown full in the face, said quite sternly: "You are wrong, sir; you are mistaking me for somebody else," and walked, with great dignity, away. ”

“ This was indeed awful for an honest man. Oh, how he wished—how fervently he wished—that he had taken trouble about Lance, whoever Lance might be! But, indeed, it was a long time, as he now too clearly perceived, since he had taken any trouble about anybody. "Look here," he said urgently, staring at her beauty and dreading the moment when that light of pleasure and gratitude must fade from her beautiful eyes, "do believe me, do listen to me. ”

“ That you should have taken all that trouble about a man whom you scarcely know, simply because—well, because you've got a certain liking for me, I suppose—is flattering, to say the least." And then, as Pritchard tried to interrupt: "No, don't say anything about it. I know—I've heard from lots of people—it's the hardest thing in the world to get a job for anybody these days, and the trouble you must have taken about Lance is simply marvellous, and I'll never forget it." ”

“ Of course she hesitated, and I think that if the evening had not been lovely, the Haymarket crammed with that spirit of romance and adventure that London, in spite of its grime and the County Council, continually provides, she would not have taken the risk. In the light of after events there was, I fancy, one other inducement—she had looked at Pritchard as he stood for a moment near the theatre. You know how quick women are to make up their minds. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to add that little Meening paid our firm the second fifty pounds without a murmur.
On Pritchard's mantelpiece there is a photograph of a man; a pleasant, smiling face he has. When people ask him as to who this is, he says: "Oh, that's Guy Forrester—my best friend." But he doesn't know who it is. He found it one day in a photographer's shop. But it has just that kindly, good-natured, jolly expression that Guy Forrester is certain to have had. ”

“ Pritchard, in an agony, began: "I assure you——" when another man came up, touched Bellows on the arm, saying:
"The bell's gone, old man. We've got to trample on millions of people to get back to our place, so we'd better go." ”

“ What attracted me quite frankly in this case was neither Meening nor Pritchard nor the addition of a hundred pounds to our yearly income. We were doing very well now, and might pick and choose among our clients; the point was that I saw here an opportunity of settling an interesting question that had for a long time past intrigued me. The point was just this: Can a human being, if sufficient persuasion is brought to bear upon him, be led to believe that he is not himself, but somebody else? ”

“ I have imagined myself all sorts of people at different times, so while I eat my chicken you shall pretend to be somebody else, and if I like the person you pretend to be, I'll pretend to be somebody else, too ”

“ All great egoists are subjectively suspicious of themselves; they have built up a great wall of defence around their personality and conditions, and at all costs this wall has to be kept absolutely intact. ”

“ He explained to her that he had been too much alone lately, and that perhaps that had forced him to think too much about himself. With the naïveté of a child he declared: "It isn't about myself that other people want to hear; they want to talk about themselves!" ”

“ THE essential point about this story is to prove how eagerly and readily one's friends will join in a game or a plot if the object thereof is to make some other human being miserable and uncomfortable. ”

“ She was a girl who led one of those modern independent lives at which our most up-to-date novelists are always hinting terrible things, whereas there is nothing terrible about them at all, but only a pleasant freedom and an independent disregard of Victorian silliness. ”