en one isn't
rhetorical, but it's this, Britten--there are distresses that matter
more than all the delights or achievements in the world.... I made
her what she is--as I never made Margaret. I've made her--I've broken
her.... I'm going with my own woman. The rest of my life and England,
and so forth, must square itself to that...."

For a long time, as it seemed, we remained silent and motionless. We'd
said all we had to say. My eyes caught a printed slip upon the desk
before him, and I came back abruptly to the paper.

I picked up this galley proof. It was one of Winter's essays. "This
man goes on doing first-rate stuff," I said. "I hope you will keep him
going."

He did not answer for a moment or so. "I'll keep him going," he said at
last with a sigh.

5

I have a letter Margaret wrote me within a week of our flight. I cannot
resist transcribing some of it here, because it lights things as no word
of mine can do. It is a string of nearly inconsecutive thoughts written
in pencil in a fine, tall, sprawling hand. Its very inconsecutiveness is
essential. Many words are underlined. It was in answer to one from me;
but what I wrote has passed utterly from my mind....

"Certainly," she says, "I want to hear from you, but I do not want
to see you. There's a sort of abstract YOU that I want to go on with.
Something I've made out of you.... I want to know things about you--but
I don't want to see or feel or imagine. When some day I have got rid
of my intolerable sense of proprietorship, it may be different. Then
perhaps we may meet again. I think it is even more the loss of our
political work and dreams that I am feeling than the loss of your
presence. Aching loss. I thought so much of the things we were DOING for
the world--had given myself so unreservedly. You've left me with nothing
to DO. I am suddenly at loose ends....

"We women are trained to be so dependent on a man. I've got no life of
my own at all. It seems now to me that I wore my clothes even for you
and your schemes....

"After I have told myself a hundred times why this has happened, I ask
again, 'Why did he give things up? Why did he give things up?'...

"It is just as though you were wilfully dead....

"Then I ask again and again whether this thing need have happened at
all, whether if I had had a warning, if I had understood better, I might
not have adapted myself to your restless mind and made this catastrophe
impossible....

"Oh, my dea