"The work hasn't been coming easily at all. I
suppose I've been too conscious, lately, of the criticisms every one made
about 'The Stone House.' I don't believe one ought really to listen to
anybody and yet it's so hard not to, and so difficult to know whose opinion
one ought to take if one's going to take anybody's. I wish," he suddenly
brought out, "Henry Galleon were still alive. I could have followed him."
"But why follow anybody?"
"Ah! that's just it. I'm beginning to doubt myself and that's why it's
getting so difficult."
Her eyes searched his face and she saw, at once, that he was in very real
trouble. He looked younger, just then, she thought, than she had ever seen
him, and she felt herself so immensely old that she could have taken him
into her arms and mothered him as though he'd been her own son.
"There are a lot of things the matter," she said. "Tell me what they all
are."
"Well," he said slowly, "I suppose it's all been mostly my own fault--but
the real difficulty is that I don't seem to be able to run the business of
being married and the business of writing together. I don't think Clare in
the least cares now about my writing--she almost resents it; she cared at
first when she thought that I was going to make a huge success of it, but
now--"
"But, of course," said Miss Monogue, "that success comes slowly--it must if
it's going to be any use at all--"
"Well, she doesn't see that.
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