They were back in New York at the end of January, and Francis decided, “even after Fez and Meknes,” not to proceed with Delacroix. Shirley moved into Manhattan House and, as spring approached, sat through the day in the building’s elegant garden, working on her novel. In February she heard of the death of Archie Lyall, alone at a clinic in Zurich, and wrote a tribute for a memorial collection that Archie’s friend Patricia Clarke was putting together, one friendship leading to another; another Solaia connection expanding her world. Francis continued to see his analyst, to Shirley’s consternation. His diary in March records the single word “Pressure.” Shirley remained through her life hostile to psychoanalysis. She set down her thoughts on the subject in her notebook, singling out for rebuke its “lure of authority” and the fact that interpretations were “at expense sometimes of sense of humour or proportion.” Other criticisms were more particular:

Analysis, curiously, does not seem to enlarge subject’s tolerance for frailties of others. Encourages engrossing self-examination of own intricacies, allows subject to imagine these of singular interest to others but does not widen compassion or sense of general requirements. For example, F distressed because of guilt towards first wife due to greater pleasure with me. I, seeing him distressed, ask “Is it because you feel guilty?” Doesn’t feel able to contend, goes to psychiatrist. Back an hour later, much relieved: “It’s just because I feel guilty.” … Absorbed in own irrational distress; oblivious to effect on new wife of pronouncement of this kind combined with trip to psychiatrist one month after wedding.