the last book I ever read (David Plante's Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three, excerpt six)

from Difficult Women: A Memoir of Three (New York Review Books Classics) by David Plante:

That afternoon I left her to return to London. I had an hour in Exeter before my train and I went to the cathedral. I sat in a chapel. I felt very low. I knew that in my outer bright believing heart I had been false to Jean, because in my inner dark unbelieving heart I had loved her as a writer. I thought, But she might forgive me my cheap literary curiosity, she might even condone it; she might, perhaps, tell me that my literary interest, not only in her but in the world, was the deepest possible interest. And then it came to me that Jean was dead, because she was dead as a writer.