The blood rushed to my face and I got up and crossed
to the window, looking out and seeing nothing. Lucia daily, hourly,
side by side with me in my life, and utterly my own possession! Yes,
it was worth it! Worth all those petty considerations that had been
passing before me, but there was another heavier than all the others
massed together. My leisure would be taken from me. It would be
impossible to write then as I was writing now. Now, I was absolutely
my own master, and disposed of my time exactly as I pleased, and
days passed constantly which were wholly spent in the preparation of
a manuscript and when my train of thought was never interrupted. If
all my days were given to monotonous business work, how then, and
when, would the writing be accomplished? My evenings and nights
would be my own--or Lucia's; and this line of reflection finished in
an ironical laugh. I walked to and fro, one word hammering
persistently on my brain-sacrifice. To accept a humble, working
position, and in it to marry a woman as lovely, as vehemently
desired, and as long waited for as Lucia, would mean the sacrifice
of my talent. It would mean a suppression, a thrusting aside of
work, and, to a certain extent, of thought. In such a life there
would be so little place for it. Between the necessity of rejecting
impersonal or imaginative thought to make room for the diurnal
business routine, and the irresistible temptations to reject it at
other times for present personal pleasure, it would be rarely
accepted or welcomed, and its impetus would gradually weaken or
lessen.
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