'Because of your morbid conscientiousness. There was no need to
destroy what you had written. It was all good enough for the
market.'

'Don't use that word, Amy. I hate it!'

'You can't afford to hate it,' was her rejoinder, in very
practical tones. 'However it was before, you must write for the
market now. You have admitted that yourself.'

He kept silence.

'Where are you?' she went on to ask. 'What have you actually
done?'

'Two short chapters of a story I can't go on with. The three
volumes lie before me like an interminable desert. Impossible to
get through them. The idea is stupidly artificial, and I haven't
a living character in it.'

'The public don't care whether the characters are living or not.-
-Don't stand behind me, like that; it's such an awkward way of
talking. Come and sit down.'

He drew away, and came to a position whence he could see her
face, but kept at a distance.

'Yes,' he said, in a different way, 'that's the worst of it.'

'What is?'