July 29. Why was I so interested in how the public turned inside out? Because I, like all authors, wanted nothing so much as publicity, and here lay my personal opportunity? Just as for others, it was getting to know a publisher, or winning a competition?

It remains a mystery why one wants publicity. Now that the money has disappeared as a motive, the fact stands all the more innocently in the room – or more guilty, if you want. Naked authorial vanity, not even disguised by money.