I learned how to block out the sound of a cheering crowd and his occasional howls as I read. Henry was such a remote, dispassionate person that I enjoyed seeing him experience an extreme emotion, even if the feats of strangers were the only thing that seemed to rouse such feelings from him. The fact that I wrote all day and came home to read, he said, proved that being a journalist wasn’t taxing in the same way that being an artist was. I never disagreed with him. I did not understand what Henry did in his studio or why. At home, we spent our time together engrossed in opposite things, and this had seemed like one of the things a person had to do in marriage—accept differences, block out certain noises, be alone. There may be nothing inherently wrong with living a life like that, and perhaps I could have safely remained married and had his children and gone along with the original plan. It’s not as if I would have died from it. Not immediately.