ple are puppets, their words are pumped up out of
a stagnant reservoir. Everything I do reminds me of something I have
done before. If I could bring myself to finish one of these books, I
could get money and praise enough. Many people would not know the
difference. But the real and true critic would see through them; he
would discern that I had lost the secret. I think that perhaps I ought
to be content to work dully and faithfully on, to finish the poor dead
thing, to compose its dead limbs decently, to lay it out. But I cannot
do that, though it might be a moral discipline. I am not conscious of
the least mental fatigue, or loss of power--quite the reverse. I hunger
and thirst to write, but I have no invention.

The worst of it is that it reveals to me how much the whole of my life
was built up round the hours I gave to writing. I used to read, write
letters, do business in the morning, holding myself back from the
beloved task, not thinking over it, not anticipating the pleasure, yet
aware that some secret germination was going on among the cells of the
brain. Then came the afternoon, the walk or ride, and then at last
after tea arrived the blessed hour. The chapter was all ready to be
written, and the thing flowed equably and clearly from the pen. The
passage written, I would turn to some previous chapter, which had been
type-written, smooth out the creases, enrich the dialogue, retouch the
descriptions, omit, correct, clarify. Perhaps in the evening I would
read a passage aloud, if we were alone; and how often would Maud, with
her perfect instinct, lay her finger on a weak place, show me that
something was abrupt or lengthy, expose an unreal emotion, or, best of
all, generously and whole-heartedly approve. It seems now, looking back
upon it, that it was all impossibly happy and delightful, too good to
be true. Yet I have everything that I had, except my unhappy writing;
and the want of it poisons life. I no longer seem to lie pleasantly in
ambush for pretty traits of character, humorous situations, delicate
nuances of talk. I look blankly at garden, field, and wood, because I
cannot draw from them the setting that I want. Even my close and
intimate companionship with Maud seems to have suffered, for I was like
a child, bringing the little wonders that it finds by the hedgerow to
be looked at by a loving eye. Maud is angelically tender, kind, sweet.
She tells me only to wait; she draws me on to talk; she surrounds me