But I met you either too late or too soon.

I don't know which.

When you were away I was all right.

The moment, in the early December of the year to which I have been alluding, I had succeeded in inducing your mother to send you out of England, I collected again the torn and ravelled web of my imagination, got my life back into my own hands, and not merely finished the three remaining acts of the _Ideal Husband_, but conceived and had almost completed two other plays of a completely different type, the _Florentine Tragedy_ and _La Sainte Courtesane_, when suddenly, unbidden, unwelcome, and under circumstances fatal to my happiness, you returned.

The two works left then imperfect I was unable to take up again.