He was prompt, his eye echoing her amusement. “To express oneself actively; to do something; to succeed.”
“The artist may do all that.”
“The artist, yes; not the appreciator—the taster of life.”
“Well, as to doing something—does not that rather depend on what the something is? It ought to be something for other people, oughtn’t it?”
“You can’t do much for other people unless you have done a great deal for yourself: you are of no use to them unless you have much personal meaning. In doing all you can for yourself you probably do your best for others.”
Facing her beside the fire, he still smiled, but it was no longer the smile that offered a bull’s-eye. He really waited to hear what she would say.
Felicia’s eyes mused upon him for some silent moments; his cheerful conviction exercised a rather dissolving force upon her thoughts. Like sheep before the bark of a genial and business-like sheepdog she saw them scattering. It required an effort to arrest the silly dispersal.
“What wisdom and goodness the self should have that could dare say that,” she found, adding with a laugh for her own vagueness before his certainty, “You seem like an embodiment of the cosmic process!”
The tea was made, and as he sat down near the table, opposite her, Geoffrey remarked: “In its merely phenomenal aspect you mean, I suppose; the cosmic process in any other includes the ethical, you know.”
“Oh—I haven’t called your wisdom and goodness into question.”