“I know. Of course it won’t.”
She was tempted to be angry because he had so early abandoned hope, because he was not putting up a fight; but she saw that he was opposed to forces so much stronger than any he could command that by no courage could he unaided stand against them. Then she remembered a source whence help might come.
“John,” she said, “I want you to fight this out.”
“Fight?”
“Because I believe it’s worth the fighting. You feel hopeless now, partly, I dare say, because your other work prevents your writing, but chiefly—isn’t that true?—chiefly because you don’t feel sure that you could ever write.... You can write, you know.”
“What guarantee have you of that?” he asked, in a tone that was unusually hard, because he did not feel hard. Her presence, her voice, her repose above all, affected his uneasy mind profoundly. It was amazing that anyone should care two damns whether he wasted his life or not.
“I think I had better tell you,” she said. “I didn’t intend to. There’s a sort of convention that you mustn’t tell people good of themselves, but I shall tell you this now. I have Mr. Alter’s guarantee.”
“Because he said he liked my work? It’s so easy to say that.”
“No—more than that. He said you were an example of godless waste.”
“Good heavens!” John exclaimed with a laugh.