Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not. - E. M. Forster

One touch of regret- not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart- would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution.

She wandered as though in a dream, through the wavering sea of barley, touched with crimson stains of poppies. All unobserved, he came to her…There came from his lips no wordy protestations such as formal lovers use. No eloquence was his, nor did he suffer for lack of it. He simply enfolded her in his manly arms…

But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.