When I got back, I had to crawl up the stairs on hands and knees, I was so tired from drink and prolonged insufficiency of sleep. When I reached my bedroom, I stared into the mirror of that hideous dressing table at my own chilly face and I said aloud “Wyndham” to see what the word would sound like, let loose from the furtive hutch of my mind. It sounded bloody silly, and my face and lips intoning it looked ridiculous. I started to tear off my clothes, furiously, muttering to myself, “Bloody stupid ridiculous names they have, Wyndham, Wyndham, David Evans, what a pair of conceited pathetic self-deluding fools, what folie de grandeur. They don’t seem to realize that the theatre is a dead end, a minority art, that nobody ever goes to it but actors and actors’ wives; they think they’ve done something clever now, those two, they think they’re famous just because they’ve got a few columns in the daily press. How grudging you are, Emma, how grudging you are, don’t you know I’m a great man? Oh yes, oh yes, a pretty pointless kind of greatness, too, being a director, and why should I be taken in by it? I know it’s not real, I know that that kind of fame is just the top tenth of the iceberg and that the rest of life, real fame, real power, is nothing like this at all, I know they don’t count, pop arts and film stars and knights and dames and duchesses and Percy Edward Fararr, F.R.C.S., and Laura Montefiore, I know all that, and why should I even listen? But I do listen, I do listen, I am the perfect audience, I do more than listen, I depend. For love, and bread and butter, and company, I depend. On the cheap, the louche, the tawdry, the shiny, the glistening caratless shammy selling line.”