"Words are clumsy, I grant, but those things! Which is the 'is' and which the 'was'?"
"That's the 'was.' It's one of the Egyptian pyramids, with curlycues. Those are the moods when the spirit inside got away from you."
"And the 'is'?"
"That's a geometric eagle."
"With the curlycues become audible in one horrible screech."
"That isn't his mouth open. It's his under-beak where the pencil slipped."
"That's better. You had me quite scared." Gregory took back the paper and pencil and Jean's hands with them. "For which I am going to punish you."
Again and again, in the soft dusk, under the budding elm, he kissed her, and then he held her close and they did not speak at all.
When they began walking again they were serious.
"You see, Jean, you don't really know how it feels, because you never quit on the game as I did. I did honestly believe that it was all over for me and that I was never going to get anywhere. I felt like a little cog in a huge machine, whose place could be taken by any other little cog just as well. That's a damnable feeling. I felt at the mercy of whatever power kept the machine going."