ere arranged in two parallel columns of unequal
width, a wider, more diffused, eventful and various one which
continually broadens out, the business side of my life, and a narrow,
darker and darkling one shot ever and again with a gleam of happiness,
my home-life with Marion. For, of course, I married Marion.

I didn't, as a matter of fact, marry her until a year after Tono-Bungay
was thoroughly afloat, and then only after conflicts and discussions
of a quite strenuous sort. By that time I was twenty-four. It seems
the next thing to childhood now. We were both in certain directions
unusually ignorant and simple; we were temperamentally antagonistic, and
we hadn't--I don't think we were capable of--an idea in common. She was
young and extraordinarily conventional--she seemed never to have an
idea of her own but always the idea of her class--and I was young and
sceptical, enterprising and passionate; the two links that held us
together were the intense appeal her physical beauty had for me, and her
appreciation of her importance in my thoughts. There can be no doubt of
my passion for her. In her I had discovered woman desired. The nights I
have lain awake on account of her, writhing, biting my wrists in a fever
of longing! ...

I have told how I got myself a silk hat and black coat to please her
on Sunday--to the derision of some of my fellow-students who charged to
meet me, and how we became engaged. But that was only the beginning
of our difference. To her that meant the beginning of a not unpleasant
little secrecy, an occasional use of verbal endearments, perhaps even
kisses. It was something to go on indefinitely, interfering in no way
with her gossiping spells of work at Smithie's. To me it was a pledge
to come together into the utmost intimacy of soul and body so soon as we
could contrive it....

I don't know if it will strike the reader that I am setting out to
discuss the queer, unwise love relationship and my bungle of a marriage
with excessive solemnity. But to me it seems to reach out to vastly
wider issues than our little personal affair. I've thought over my life.
In these last few years I've tried to get at least a little wisdom out
of it. And in particular I've thought over this part of my life. I'm
enormously impressed by the ignorant, unguided way in which we two
entangled ourselves with each other. It seems to me the queerest thing
in all this network of misunderstandings and misstatements and faulty