That was when I was twenty-one. From about sixteen on I had been
acutely miserable--physically miserable. I never knew when I wouldn't
actually cave in. I felt like a bankrupt living on borrowed money. Of
course, it's plain enough now--the revolt of starved nerves. I cared only
for my mind, grew only in that, and the rest of me withered up like a
stalk in dry soil. So the flower drooped too--in decadent epigram. But
nobody pointed out the truth of it all to me, and I scorned to give my
body a thought. People predicted a brilliant future--for me, crying
inside! Then I married. I married the girl who had taken the star part in
the play. According to the logic of the situation, it was inevitable.
Everybody remarked how inevitable it was. A decorative girl, you know. She
wanted to be the wife of a great man.... Well, we didn't get along. There
was an honest streak in me somewhere which hated deception. I couldn't
play the part of "brilliant" young poet with any success. She was at me
all the while to write more of the same thing. And I didn't want to. The
difference between the "great" man I was supposed to be and the sick child
I really was, began to torture.
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