Manchurian Books

This he hung up in
the studio over the oil shop, with a flap of brown paper; by way of a
curtain over it to accentuate its libellous offence.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH
MARION I
As I look back on those days in which we built up the great Tono-Bungay
property out of human hope and credit for bottles and rent and printing,
I see my life as it were arranged in two parallel columns of unequal
width, a wider, more diffused, eventful and various one which
continually broadens out, the business side of my life, and a narrow,
darker and darkling one shot ever and again with a gleam of happiness,
my home-life with Marion. For, of course, I married Marion.
I didn't, as a matter of fact, marry her until a year after Tono-Bungay
was thoroughly afloat, and then only after conflicts and discussions
of a quite strenuous sort. By that time I was twenty-four. It seems
the next thing to childhood now. We were both in certain directions
unusually ignorant and simple; we were temperamentally antagonistic, and
we hadn't--I don't think we were capable of--an idea in common.


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