'They don't leave me alone. They want to live.... But they can only live on the stage.'
He shook back his head and with supreme arrogance he said,—
'As they will when the stage is fit for them.'
She could not bear the strain any longer, and to bring him back to actuality she said,—
'How old are you?'
'Thirty-one.'
His next move horrified her. He stepped forward, seized his manuscript, and tore it into fragments.
'There!' he said, 'are you satisfied?'
'No. That was childish of you.... You will only sit down and begin all over again.'
'I swear I will not. I swear it. It is finished. All that is over.... I don't know how I shall ever begin again. Perhaps I shall not.... All last night I was struggling to get away from it, to avoid facing it.... They're all mean and ignoble and pitiful; brain-sick most of them; and not fit to live in the same world as you. They're not fit to be exhibited on the public stage, these poor nervous little modern people with their dried instincts and their withered thoughts, clever and helpless, rotting in inaction.... No. It has been all wrong. I've been a fool, but I couldn't pretend.... I think I knew it in my head, but it needed you to bring it home to me.... I'm not fit to live in the same world as you. I ought not to have seen you to-day....'