‘And so?’ she said.

‘But the point is, I don’t think I’m prepared to give all that much reverence to that damned blade of grass, even now.’

At which she smiled, sitting in her chair four-square and upright, rather bad-tempered because of my slowness, because I so invariably missed the point. Yes, she looked like an impatient housewife who has mislaid something or who is going to be out with her timetable.

Then I woke into a late afternoon, the room cold and dark, I was depressed; I was entirely the white female bosom shot full of cruel male arrows. I was aching with the need for Saul, and I wanted to abuse him and call him names. Then of course he would say: Oh poor Anna, I’m sorry, then we would make love.

A short story: or a short novel: comic and ironic: A woman, appalled by her capacity for surrendering herself to a man, determines to free herself. She determinedly takes two lovers, sleeping with them on alternate nights — the moment of freedom being when she would be able to say to herself that she had enjoyed them both equally. The two men become instinctively aware of each other’s existence; one, jealous, falls in love with her seriously; the other becomes cool and guarded. In spite of all her determination, she cannot prevent herself loving the man who has fallen in love with her; freezing up with the man who is guarded. Nevertheless, although she is in despair that she is as ‘unfree’ as ever, she announces to both men that she has now become thoroughly emancipated, she has at last achieved the ideal of full sexual and emotional pleasure with two men at once. The cool and guarded man is interested to hear it, makes detached and intelligent remarks about female emancipation. The man she is in fact in love with, hurt and appalled, leaves her. She is left with the man she does not love and who does not love her, exchanging intelligent psychological conversation.

The idea for this story intrigued me, and I began thinking how it should be written. How, for instance, would it change if I used Ella instead of myself? I had not thought about Ella for some time, and I realized that of course she had changed in the interval; she would have become more defensive, for instance. I saw her with her hair altered — she would be tying it back again, looking severe; she would be wearing different clothes. I was watching Ella moving about my room; and then I began imagining how she would be with Saul — much more intelligent, I think, than I, cooler, for instance. After a while I realized I was doing what I had done before, creating ‘the third’ — the woman altogether better than I was. For I could positively mark the point where Ella left reality, left how she would, in fact, behave because of her nature; and move into a large generosity of personality impossible to her. But I didn’t dislike this new person I was creating; I was thinking that quite possibly these marvellous, generous things we walk side by side with in our imaginations could come into existence, simply because we need them, because we imagine them. Then I began to laugh because of the distance between what I was imagining and what in fact I was, let alone what Ella was.