If I had had the means, I should have devoted myself to the life
of a scholar. That, I quite believe, is my natural life; it's
only the influence of recent circumstances that has made me a
writer of novels. A man who can't journalise, yet must earn his
bread by literature, nowadays inevitably turns to fiction, as the
Elizabethan men turned to the drama. Well, but I should have got
back, I think, into the old line of work. It was my marriage that
completed what the time abroad had begun.'
He looked up suddenly, and added:
'I am speaking as if to myself. You, of course, don't
misunderstand me, and think I am accusing my wife.'
'No, I don't take you to mean that, by any means.'
'No, no; of course not. All that's wrong is my accursed want of
money. But that threatens to be such a fearful wrong, that I
begin to wish I had died before my marriage-day. Then Amy would
have been saved. The Philistines are right: a man has no business
to marry unless he has a secured income equal to all natural
demands. I behaved with the grossest selfishness. I might have
known that such happiness was never meant for me.
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