stressing
in its way, was my discovery of the fact that it was apparently
impossible for me to think consecutively, or to write when I had
thought, in a room which was my wife's living place. It was strange
that I should never have given a thought before marriage to a
practical point so intimately touching my peace of mind and means of
livelihood.

At present it did not seem to me that I could possibly afford to rent
another room. I certainly was not prepared to banish Fanny to our tiny
bedroom, separated from the other room by folding doors. She had no
notion as yet that her presence or doings constituted any sort of
interruption in my work. The change from carrying on the whole work of
a lodging-house to living in lodgings with practically no domestic
work to do was one which, in my foolish ignorance, I had thought would
prove immensely beneficial to overworked Fanny. As a fact I think it
bored her terribly after the first week. She sometimes liked to read,
but never, I think, for more than half an hour at a stretch. She never
wrote a letter, and did not care for thinking.

I have found very few people in any class of life who like to sit and
think; very few, even among educated people, who showed any sympathy
or comprehension in the matter of my own lifelong desire for leisure
in which to think. To do this or that, yes; but just to think! That
seems to be a lamentable and most boring kind of futility, as most
folk see it. It has for many years figured as the most desirable thing
in life to me.

Looking back upon my married life, I believe I may say with truth that
for two years I did not relax in my sincere efforts to make it a
success. It would be more exact perhaps to say that for one year I
tried hard to make it a success, and for another year I tried hard to
make it tolerable. Yes, I did my best through that period, though my
efforts were quite unsuccessful. I realise that this does not justify
or excuse the fact that, to all intents and purposes, I then gave up
trying. In that, of course, I was to blame; very much to blame. Well,
I did not go unpunished.

It would not be easy for a literary man who had never tried it to
understand what it means to live practically in one room (with a
sleeping cubicle opening out of it) with a woman. I suppose a woman
would never forgive or see much excuse for the man who makes a failure
of married life. I wonder how it would strike a literary woman if she
tried life in the