I had no need to ask a publisher to accept my MSS. at his own
financial risk.

I was not the traditional struggling young writer of the lady
novelist who treats poverty and genius as convertible terms, making
up with the former quality whatever her hero lacks of the other.

No; although the combination may be very romantic, I confess,
notwithstanding that I was an unrecognised author, I was not living
in a garret, nor writing my MSS. by the proverbially flaring candle,
nor going without my dinner in order to pay for foolscap.

But my feelings were as bitter, and the sense of disappointment as
sharp, as any attic-dwelling genius' could have been, even if we
suppose the lady novelist to have thrown in a conventionally
consumptive wife.

In fact they were stronger because more absolute, more concentrated
in themselves.

There were no pangs of hunger to distract my attention, no
traditionally patient wife to look sadly at me, no responsibilities
for others lying upon me and my rejected MSS.

Simply all my own desires for myself centred in them.

There was one side issue which at times seemed to include
everything, to be everything in itself, but the moments when this
forced itself in overwhelming prominence upon my brain were few.