'What are you?' she asked, thinking he was joking, and his sentence left unfinished on purpose.
'I am,' he repeated with emphasis. 'I have discovered that I am, that I exist. Your question to that woman made me suddenly see it.'
His wife looked flustered, and said vaguely, 'What?' Wimble continued:
'As yet, I don't know exactly what I am, but I mean to find out. Up till now I've been automatic, just doing things because other people do 'em. But I've discovered that's not necessary. I'm going to do things in future because I want to. But first I must find out why I am what I am. Then the explanation'll come—of everything. Do you see what I mean? It's a case of "Enquire within upon everything."' And he smiled. His heart fluttered. He felt wings in it—again.
'Do you mean you're going to start in the writing or publishing line, Joe?' It had always been her secret ambition.
'That may come later,' he told her, 'when I've something to say. For it's really big, this discovery of mine. Most people never find it out at all. She'—indicating with his thumb the direction Mrs. Marks had taken— 'hasn't, for instance. She simply isn't aware that she exists. She isn't.'
'Isn't what, dear?'
'She is not, I mean, because she doesn't know she is,' he said loudly.
'Oh, that way. I see.' Mrs. Wimble looked a wee bit frightened. He had seen an animal, a rabbit for instance, look like that before it decided to plunge back into its hole for safety.
'There are strange, big things about these days, I know,' she said after a pause, thinking of the books with queer titles his employers published. 'You have been reading too much, dear, thinking and——'