"But you don't want to be there."
"Of course not. No one does. I don't imagine any one chooses it."
"If you go there it will be because you choose it."
"I wish I saw things your way," he observed. "At times I feel as sure of success as if it were inevitable, and then suddenly down sweeps the black uncertainty, and I am afraid, timid, and unnerved."
She looked at him sadly.
"Don't you believe in your work, Lawrence?"
"Yes, that is about all I do believe in."
"Then what is the matter?"
"It is that, after all, thousands of men have believed in their work to no avail. One can never know whether he is a fad or a real artist. It isn't only that, either. One's work, when it is his life, requires so much besides to make it possible. It is that which gives me the blue fear you see. I always imagine that the thing I want just then is absolutely essential to my better work. Perhaps it is. I don't know. I know only that I am persuaded that it is. Then I set about to get that thing and I fail."
"But do you always fail?" Claire was unconsciously pleading her own cause.