They say that everyone is capable of one novel. And, in my opinion, most people could write one play.

Whether I wrote mine in an inspiration of despair, I cannot say. I wrote it.

Three years had passed, and James was still haggling with those who buy men's brains. His earnings were enough just to keep his head above water, but not enough to make us two one.

Perhaps, because everything is clear and easy for us now, I am gradually losing a proper appreciation of his struggle. That should never be. He did not win. But he did not lose; which means nearly as much. For it is almost less difficult to win than not to lose, so my mother has told me, in modern journalistic London. And I know that he would have won. The fact that he continued the fight as he did was in itself a pledge of ultimate victory. What he went through while trying with his pen to make a living for himself and me I learned from his letters.

"London," he wrote, "is not paved with gold; but in literary fields there are nuggets to be had by the lightest scratching. And those nuggets are plays. A successful play gives you money and a name automatically. What the ordinary writer makes in a year the successful dramatist receives, without labour, in a fortnight." He went on to deplore his total lack of dramatic intuition. "Some men," he said, "have some of the qualifications while falling short of the others. They have a sense of situation without the necessary tricks of technique. Or they sacrifice plot to atmosphere, or atmosphere to plot. I, worse luck, have not one single qualification. The nursing of a climax, the tremendous omissions in the dialogue, the knack of stage characterisation--all these things are, in some inexplicable way, outside me."

It was this letter that set me thinking. Ever since James had left the island, I had been chafing at the helplessness of my position. While he toiled in London, what was I doing? Nothing. I suppose I helped him in a way. The thought of me would be with him always, spurring him on to work, that the time of our separation might be less. But it was not enough. I wanted to be _doing_ something.... And it was during these restless weeks that I wrote my play.

I think nothing will ever erase from my mind the moment when the central idea of _The Girl who Waited_ came to me. It was a boisterous October evening. The wind had been rising all day. Now the branches of the lilac were dancing in the rush of the storm, and far out in the bay one could see the white crests of the waves gleaming through the growing darkness. We had just finished tea. The lamp was lit in our little drawing-room, and on the sofa, so placed that the light fell over her left shoulder in the manner recommended by oculists, sat my mother with Schopenhauer's _Art of Literature_. Ponto slept on the rug.

Something in the unruffled peace of the scene tore at my nerves. I have seldom felt so restless. It may have been the storm that made me so. I think myself that it was James's letter. The boat had been late that morning, owing to the weather, and I had not received the letter till after lunch. I listened to the howl of the wind, and longed to be out in it.