7


I didn't see things with Altiora's simplicity.

I admired Margaret very much, I was fully aware of all that she and
I might give each other; indeed so far as Altiora went we were quite
in agreement. But what seemed solid ground to Altiora and the
ultimate footing of her emasculated world, was to me just the
superficial covering of a gulf--oh! abysses of vague and dim, and
yet stupendously significant things.

I couldn't dismiss the interests and the passion of sex as Altiora
did. Work, I agreed, was important; career and success; but deep
unanalysable instincts told me this preoccupation was a thing quite
as important; dangerous, interfering, destructive indeed, but none
the less a dominating interest in life. I have told how flittingly
and uninvited it came like a moth from the outer twilight into my
life, how it grew in me with my manhood, how it found its way to
speech and grew daring, and led me at last to experience. After
that adventure at Locarno sex and the interests and desires of sex
never left me for long at peace. I went on with my work and my
career, and all the time it was like--like someone talking ever and
again in a room while one tries to write.

There were times when I could have wished the world a world all of
men, so greatly did this unassimilated series of motives and
curiosities hamper me; and times when I could have wished the world
all of women. I seemed always to be seeking something in women, in
girls, and I was never clear what it was I was seeking. But never--