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.