‘Stop embroidering that curtain, for God’s sake, Puddle. I simply can’t stand the sound of your needle; it makes a booming noise like a drum every time you prod that tightly stretched linen.’
Puddle looked up: ‘You’re smoking too much.’
‘I dare say I am. I can’t write any more.’
‘Since when?’
‘Ever since I began this new book.’
‘Don’t be such a fool!’
‘But it’s God’s truth, I tell you—I feel flat, it’s a kind of spiritual dryness. This new book is going to be a failure, sometimes I think I’d better destroy it.’ She began to pace up and down the room, dull-eyed yet tense as a tightly drawn bow string.
‘This comes of working all night,’ Puddle murmured.
‘I must work when the spirit moves me,’ snapped Stephen.
Puddle put aside her wool work embroidery. She was not much moved by this sudden depression, she had grown quite accustomed to these literary moods, yet she looked a little more closely at Stephen and something that she saw in her face disturbed her.