I knew I oughtn't to go on any further if
I wanted to do anything real. Then one night we had an "artistic" dinner.
My wife had gotten hold of a famous English poet, and through him a
publisher. The publisher was her real game. I drank champagne before
dinner so as to be "brilliant." I was. And before I realized it, Norah had
secured a promise from the publisher to bring out a book of plays. I
remember she said it was practically finished. But it wasn't, only the
one, and I hated that. But I sat down conscientiously to write the book
that she, and apparently all the world that counted, expected me to write.
Well, I couldn't write it. Not a blessed word! Something inside me refused
to work. And there I was. In a month or so she began to ask about it.
Norah thought I ought to turn them out while she waited. I walked up and
down the park one afternoon wondering what to tell her.... And when I
realized that either she would never understand or would despise me, I
grew desperate. I wrote her a note, full of fine phrases about
"incompatibility," her "unapproachable ideals," the "soul's need of
freedom"--things she _would_ understand and wear a heroic attitude
about--and fled.
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