"I don't know about that. I don't believe that we all instinctively know what we want to do. Most of us have to live some time and be hurt a lot before we find out very much about ourselves."
"I suppose we do," she said humbly.
Herrick thrilled at the note in Jean's voice. But he went on in the same serious way as if he were being forced almost against his judgment to let Jean into his confidence.
"For years the longing to get things down on paper haunted me, but I only knew that I was miserable and felt stifled. It wasn't till I came to the city, here, that the puzzle suddenly fitted into place." He stopped and made a quick sweeping gesture with both hands. "Wouldn't it be great to get all this, all the heat and noise and mud and life, to get the whole hot, seething pain on paper! God, what a picture!"
Something came into Jean's throat and hurt.
"It would be glorious." She felt that Herrick had been granted a fineness of spiritual vision she could never hope for. It coarsened her that she had seen only the dirt and squalor of the vice, while the man beside her had grasped something beneath that linked it up with reality even as they both knew it, a kind of cosmic unity too finely toned for her ears.
"You must do it. You must. Don't let an impulse like that die. It's worth any sacrifice, anything. Can't you really get at it?"
Herrick looked quickly away. "Perhaps," he said shortly, "some day, if the conditions are right, I may."
He did not take Jean's arm again and in a few moments they came to an old loft building with a dark, yawning entry.
"Here we are." They turned into the blackness, and Jean felt it close about them.