My novel, however, is like unto a carriage wheel to which the brake has locked itself. My thoughts stir much like porridge when they should really be ethereal. Of men I write well, for they say the proper things that I myself would say. As to women, I find it difficult to describe such thoughts as they may have. Their conversations are thus stilted, and not what I would have them say at all. The image of my once-beloved floats ever in my head. Alas, I see her with her nipples stiff, her drawers already untied beneath her dress. I should scourge myself upon such thoughts as my old tutor used to tell me to.

It is notable, however-and I must somehow convey this with such clarity as I can muster-that the thoughts we least would have are those which fight with tooth and claw against suppression. Clearly, such is the devil's work. Temptation it is called, and is only with ardent will to be put down. Thus would I not listen to her when she used crude words, however warm her breath against my mouth, however luring were her fingertips. The act of love should be performed in silence and be quickly done. It is deemed for procreation, not for pleasure, so I often said to her.

'Why, there is naught but paper in your mind sometimes. Someone should light it with a match', said she, and fell to musing who might do it best, just to annoy me and to try and make my mind a whirlpool of unthought-of things.

'You are not so much interested in the content of your writing as in the act of working with your pen, Phillip. Yet contrariwise, you are not so much interested in the act of love as in the abstract content of it', once she chided me.