And now she made a decision. She walked back to the hotel, across Paris, packed, sent a wire to Julia and another to Patricia, and took the coach out to the airport. There was a free seat on an aircraft at nine o’clock, three hours from now. In the airport restaurant she ate at ease — feeling herself; a traveller has the right to be alone. She read a dozen French women’s magazines, professionally, marking features and stories that might do for Patricia Brent. She did this work with half her mind; and found herself thinking: Well, the cure for the sort of condition I am in is work. I shall write another novel. But the trouble is, with the last one there was never a point when I said: I shall write a novel. I found I was writing a novel. Well, I must put myself in the same state of mind — a kind of open readiness, a passive waiting. Then perhaps one day I’ll find myself writing. But I don’t really care about it — I didn’t really care about the other. Suppose Paul had said to me: I’ll marry you if you promise never to write another word? My God, I would have done it! I would have been prepared to buy Paul, like an Elise buying Robert Brun. But that would have been a double deception, because the act of writing it was irrelevant — it was not an act of creation, but an act of recording something. The story was already written, in invisible ink … well perhaps somewhere inside me is another story written in invisible ink … but what’s the point? I am unhappy because I have lost some kind of independence, some freedom; but my being ‘free’ has nothing to do with writing a novel; it has to do with my attitude towards a man, and that has been proved dishonest, because I am in pieces. The truth is that my happiness with Paul was more important to me than anything and where has that landed me? Alone, frightened to be alone, without resources, running from an exciting city because I haven’t the moral energy to ring up any one of a dozen people who would be pleased if I did — or at least might turn out to be pleased.

What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows: in this case, that women’s emotions are all still fitted for a kind of society that no longer exists. My deep emotions, my real ones, are to do with my relationship with a man. One man. But I don’t live that kind of life, and I know few women who do. So what I feel is irrelevant and silly … I am always coming to the conclusion that my real emotions are foolish, I am always having, as it were, to cancel myself out. I ought to be like a man, caring more for my work than for people; I ought to put my work first, and take men as they come, or find an ordinary comfortable man for bread and butter reasons — but I won’t do it, I can’t be like that …