The Razor's Edge

Maugham warns the reader that they can skip this section, as it consists mostly of a conversation he has with Larry. This conversation, however, is the main reason he wrote the book.

Isabel has inherited most of Elliott’s estate. This will allow Gray to go back into business in America, and they plan to leave Paris in the spring.

Maugham meets Larry again in Paris and asks Larry how he learned to do the trick that relieved Gray’s headache. Larry learned it from a Yogi in India. Maugham asks him why he went to India. Larry tells him:

After his dark night of the soul, Larry met a Benedictine monk. One day, the monk asked Larry whether he believed in God. Larry couldn’t answer yes or no, so he told father Ensheim about himself: He was a perfectly ordinary boy, enraptured by aviation. Flying gave him a sense of unity with something vastly greater than himself. Then, when he had his first sight of a dead body—that of a man he had known well—he had a driving need to understand how there could be evil in the world.

Father Ensheim assured him that if he turned to the Church and immersed himself in its prayers and rituals as if he believed, then he would come to believe in earnest.