CONFESSIONS OF AN AUTHOR'S WIFE."
(Here followed a list of eight names.)
"Ah! But who did?
WHO?"
"I don't see it suits us at all," she said without enthusiasm.
"Why, it's putting people on the wrong track," he tried to argue.
She would not have it. "It's making people want to know when they don't really care a bit," she said with a ripe worldly wisdom quite beyond her years.
And soon, to Mr. Blatchley's yet greater delight, people did begin to care. They cared so much, in fact, that they all read the book in order to find out. And nobody knew even then. It was, however, something to discuss at boring dinner-parties; so every one was pleased. Every one but Helena.
Reading the book afresh, she was astounded, terrified, to see how near it was to life. She had thought it all altered beyond recognition: fiction merely based on fact. But now she realised that all the parts of it which mattered—Zoë's ambitions, her husband's repression—were true, truer than she ever knew indeed: whilst all the variations—names, place, ages, children, work—made no real difference at all. In all life it is the soul alone that matters, for there lies happiness and all those others are mere accidents. And the soul of Zoë was the soul of Helena; the life of Helena, the life of Zoë. Reading her book, she realised for the first time her life.
Daily the thing became more of a nightmare.