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was so obscurely worded that at first I thought it might refer to rough drafts or discarded manuscripts, but I soon found out that, except for a few odd pages dispersed among other papers, he himself had destroyed them long ago, for he belonged to that rare type of writer who knows that nothing ought to remain except the perfect achievement: the printed book; that its actual existence is inconsistent with that of its spectre, the uncouth manuscript flaunting its imperfections like a revengeful ghost carrying its own head under its arm; and that for this reason the litter of the workshop, no matter its sentimental or commercial value, must never subsist.
    When for the first time in my life I visited Sebastian's small flat in London at 36 Oak Park Gardens, I had an empty feeling of having postponed an appointment until too late. Three rooms, a cold fireplace, silence. During the last years of his life he had not lived there very much, nor had he died there. Half a dozen suits, mostly old, were hanging in the wardrobe, and for a second I had an odd impression of Sebastian's body being stiffly multiplied in a succession of square-shouldered forms. I had seen him once in that brown coat; I touched its sleeve, but it was limp and irresponsive to that faint call of memory. There were shoes, too, which had walked many miles and had now reached the end of their journey. Folded shirts lying on their backs. What could all these quiet things tell me of Sebastian? His bed. A small old oil-painting, a little cracked (muddy road, rainbow, beautiful puddles) on the ivory white of the wall above. The eye-spot of his awakening.
    As I looked about me, all things in that bedroom seemed to have just jumped back in the nick of time as if caught unawares, and now were gradually returning my gaze, trying to see whether I had noticed their guilty start. This was particularly the case with the low, white-robed armchair near the bed; I wondered what it had stolen. Then by groping in the recesses of its reluctant folds I found something hard: it turned out to be a Brazil nut, and the armchair again folding its arms resumed its inscrutable expression (which might have been one of contemptuous dignity).
    The bathroom. The glass shelf, bare save for an empty talc-powder tin with violets figured between its shoulders, standing there alone, reflected in the mirror like a coloured advertisement.
    Then I examined the two main rooms. The dining-room was curiously impersonal, like all places where people eat — perhaps because food is our chief link with the common chaos of matter rolling about us. There was, it is true, a cigarette end in a glass ashtray, but it had been left there by a certain Mr McMath, house agent.
    The study. From here one got a view of the back garden or park, the fading sky, a couple of elms, not oaks, in spite of the street name's promise. A leather divan sprawling at one end of the room. Bookshelves densely peopled. The writing desk. There was almost nothing on it: a red pencil, a box of paper clips — it looked sullen and distant, but the lamp on its western edge was adorable. I found its pulse and the opal globe melted into light: that magic moon had seen Sebastian's white moving hand. Now I was really getting down to business. I took the key that had been bequeathed me and unlocked the drawers.
    First of all I dislodged the two bundles of letters on which Sebastian had scribbled: to be destroyed. One was folded in such a fashion that I could not get a glimpse of the writing: the notepaper was egg-shell blue with a dark-blue rim. The other packet consisted of a medley of notepaper criss-crossed in a bold feminine scrawl. I guessed whose it was. For a wild instant I struggled with the temptation to examine closer both bundles. I am sorry to say the better man won. But as I was burning them in the grate one sheet of the blue became loose, curving backwards under the torturing flame, and before the crumpling blackness had crept over it,