'That's just what I ought to do.' There was a brief silence and then suddenly Henri decided the moment had come to unburden himself. 'I brought back your stories,' he said. He smiled at Lambert. 'It's funny, you've had lots of interesting experiences, you've lived them hard, and I've often been fascinated hearing you tell about them. Your articles are always full of meat. And yet in these stories nothing seems to happen. I've been wondering why.'

'You don't think they're any good, do you?' Lambert said. He shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, I warned you.'

'The trouble is you haven't put anything of yourself into them,' Henri said.

Lambert hesitated. 'The things that really affect me wouldn't be interesting to anyone else.'

Henri smiled. 'But it's all too obvious that the ones you do talk about don't affect you at all. You get the feeling that you wrote these stories as if you were writing a hundred lines for punishment.'