And in this surely he was right--only might not things
come, or be sent to him in some other way? His friend suggested that he
might, changing the outward occurrences, and the description of the
persons to whom they happened, in such fashion that there could be no
identification of them, tell the very tale of how Annie and he came to
know and love each other, taking especial care to muffle up to
shapelessness, or at least featurelessness, the part his mother had
taken in their story. This seeming to Hector a thing possible, he took
courage, and set about it at once, gathering interest as he proceeded,
and writing faster and faster as he grew in hope of success. At the same
time it was not favorable to the result that he felt constantly behind
him, the darkly lowering necessity that, urging him on, yet debilitated
every motion of the generating spirit.
It took him a long time to get the story into a condition that he dared
to consider even passable; and the longer that he had not the delight
that verse would have brought with it in the process of its production.
Nevertheless he would now and then come to a passage in writing which
the old emotion would seem to revive; but in reading these, Annie,
modest and doubtful as she always was of her own judgment, especially
where her husband's work was concerned, seemed to recognize a certain
element of excitement that gave it a glow, or rather, glamour of
unreality, or rather, unnaturalness, which affected her as inharmonious,
therefore unfit, or out of place.
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