Where there is blood there is life. And if killing a wasp is the merest trifle compared with killing a man, still it is a fitter subject for novelist or biographer than this mere woolgathering; this thinking; this sitting in a chair day in, day out, with a cigarette and a sheet of paper and a pen and an ink pot. If only subjects, we might complain (for our patience is wearing thin), had more consideration for their biographers! What is more irritating than to see one’s subject, on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble, slipping out of one’s grasp altogether and indulging⁠—witness her sighs and gasps, her flushing, her palings, her eyes now bright as lamps, now haggard as dawns⁠—what is more humiliating than to see all this dumb show of emotion and excitement gone through before our eyes when we know that what causes it⁠—thought and imagination⁠—are of no importance whatsoever?