The novel, set in Dublin in June 1921 during the Irish War of Independence, revolved around a woman torn between an Irish patriot and an English writer with pro-Republican sympathies. It was well received, with one reviewer commenting that "the novel shows unusual promise". Soon after, Miles learnt that he had an inoperable brain tumour, and disappeared from Manning's life. Since the affair had been kept secret she had difficulty obtaining information about him, and could not afford to visit him in the Edinburgh hospital where he lay dying. She lost her job at Peter Jones, moved to a well-paid job at the Medici Society, but was sacked when she refused her boss's order to give up novel-writing in the evening so as to conserve her energy for the day job. Manning obtained other work assessing new novels for their potential as films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but by the time she had saved sufficient money for a trip to Edinburgh, Miles was too ill to see her. He died in December 1937. Miles did not normally introduce his literary friends to each other, but before his death, he had been forced by circumstance to introduce Manning to the poet Stevie Smith. The two developed an immediate rapport and enjoyed exploring London's backstreets, with regular outings to museums, cinema, and visits to the Palmers Green home that Smith shared with an eccentric aunt. According to a mutual friend, Manning found in Smith's home "an atmosphere of security and comfort which must have made her room in Oakley Street seem even chillier and more threadbare". The novelist and critic Walter Allen met Manning in 1937 and observed that she had a "devastating" wit "and was as formidable a young woman as any in London". Manning and Smith, he added, were a malicious pair of snobs. Marriage and Romania In July 1939, Walter Allen introduced Manning to the charming Marxist R. D. "Reggie" Smith. Smith was a large, energetic man, possessed of a constant desire for the company of others. The son of a Manchester toolmaker, he had studied at Birmingham University, where he had been coached by the left-wing poet Louis MacNeice and founded the Birmingham Socialist Society. According to the British intelligence organisation MI5, Smith had been recruited as a communist spy by Anthony Blunt on a visit to Cambridge University in 1938. When he met Manning, Smith was on leave from