I began leaving home at nineteen and kept leaving until I was married in the living room at twenty-four in a noisy act of faith that announced the matter accomplished. My husband was small (my size); blond (‘insignificant-looking’, as Mama put it); foreign (he couldn’t defend himself in English). We were drawn to each other by a common love of the arts, but he was a visionary painter and in me literature had aroused the critical faculty. He was wordless, I was all words. In him repression was demonic, in me explosive. Most of the time he brooded, twice a year he drank himself into a stupor. I remained sober and a scornful tongue was my constant companion. All the differences were negotiable except one: I talked better than he did and I used words like a weapon. That knocked us hopelessly off balance. I opened my mouth and power was mine: I could slice, cut, and pin; thrust, batter, and storm. He was helpless before the amazing siege. To the very largest degree that must have been how I wanted it, although certainly I could not then see this simple reality driving me on in all my attachments to men. The course I had followed to lead me to this man and this marriage was not difficult to trace (any child analyst could have delivered a creditable description of the psychological terrain), but I remained deep in the woods a quarter of a mile from the road.