Twilight Sleep
Faugh—to think he had delegated his own Nona to look after her. . . the thought sickened him.
And then, in the end, it had all come out so differently. He needed his hard tramp around the Park to see just why.
It was Mrs. Landish's own attitude—her silly rambling irresponsibility, so like an elderly parody of Lita's youthful carelessness. Mrs. Landish had met Manford's stern interrogations by the vague reply that he mustn't ever come to her for dates and figures and statistics: that facts meant nothing to her, that the only thing she cared for was Inspiration, Genius, the Divine Fire, or whatever he chose to call it. Perhaps she'd done wrong, but she had sacrificed everything, all her life, to her worship of genius. She was always hunting for it everywhere, and it was because, from the first, she had felt a touch of it in Lita that she had been so devoted to the child. Didn't Manford feel it in Lita too? Of course she, Mrs. Landish, had dreamed of another sort of marriage for her niece. . . Oh, but Manford mustn't misunderstand! Jim was perfect—too perfect. That was the trouble. Manford surely guessed the meaning of that "too"? Such absolute reliability, such complete devotion, were sometimes more of a strain to the artistic temperament than scenes and infidelities. And Lita was first and foremost an artist, born to live in the world of art—in quite other values—a fourth-dimensional world, as it were. It wasn't
