BUT MY misery those years was deeper. I was in revolt against my way of life, my respectability and that of the wife I loved. Against our orderly and proper way of living. I longed for what I can only call chaos. I kept feeling I was in the wrong place, doing the wrong things with the wrong people. I had to strain to sit still across from the good friends Molly would invite to dinner, and would chafe at the conversation on culture, politics, and the arts that followed the meal. By the end of the evening, my smile had frozen. I felt that all the conversation we’d taken part in was the same as all the other conversations we’d taken part in, that all our friends were in constant and inevitable agreement on any and all subjects. I could always anticipate what they were going to say. They were, each of them, “on the side of the angels,” and their views were fixed. No doubts were ever raised.

I, on the other hand, was on the side of the devil.