"I believe you would understand me if only you could let go." "How can I let go," he roared, "when I feel that you are weighing and judging and criticizing every word I say, every thing I do?" And she was silent for a long time. It was a new and dreadful idea, that she was hemming him in by making him feel that she was judging him. It was so far from her intention that she protested:-- "I am not judging you. I accept you just as you are." "Accept!" he grumbled. "Accept! When you keep me at arm's-length!" "I go as far as we can, then it breaks down." "What breaks down?" "I don't know what to call it. Sympathy, if you like." "Oh! then if it breaks down it isn't any good, and we may as well give it up for ever. I will learn to shuffle along without you." "I won't shuffle. I refuse to hear of your shuffling." "Then you want to know what to do?" "What?" "Take your place by my side, walk along with me like a sober, decent woman." "But I want to fly with you, hand in hand." She was elated, exalted. Her eyes shone and she glowed with excitement and hope. Surely he would understand now! Surely she had found words for it at last! "That's rubbish," he said. "Men aren't birds, and they are not angels. If you want to fly, go up in an airyoplane. That's another machine like the cinema. It relieves human beings of another mania." She turned away to hide the tears that had gushed to her eyes. Why did he waste his strength? Why did he keep his force from entering into his imagination? That evening was most miserable for her, and she was glad when it came to an end. * * * * * To add to her difficulties he was making himself ill over his work, which, as he said, had gone completely rotten, and he did not scruple to ascribe it to her. He would spend a delightful happy evening with her and feel that his difficulties were over, that in the morning he would be able to make a beginning upon all the ideas that were so jumbled and close-packed in his head. But in the morning he would be dull and nerveless, and though he might work himself up into a frenzy, yet he could produce nothing that was any good. His work was easier, and even a little better, after the evenings when they almost quarrelled.