“It’s a lovely design!” she cried, looking at the new flag. “I might make a cushion-embroidery of it. But as a flag it’s absurd. Of course, you lonely phœnix, you are the bird and the ashes and the flames all by yourself! You would be. Nobody else enters in at all. I—I am just nowhere—I don’t exist.”
“Yes,” he said, “you are the nest.”
“I’ll watch it!” she cried. “Then you shall sleep on thorns, Mister.”
“That’s what I am doing,” she replied. “Mr Dionysus and Mr Hermes and Mr Thinks-himself-grand. I’ve got one thing to tell you. Without me you’d be nowhere, you’d be nothing, you’d not be that,” and she snapped her fingers under his nose, a movement he particularly disliked.
“I agree,” he replied, “that without the nest the phœnix would be—would be up a tree—would be in the air—would be nowhere, and couldn’t find a stable spot to resurrect in. The nest is as the body to the soul: the cup that holds the fire, and in which the ashes fall to take form again. The cup is the container and the sustainer.”
“Yes, I’ve done enough containing and sustaining of you, my gentleman, in the years I’ve known you. It’s almost time you left off wanting so much mothering. You can’t live a moment without me.”
“I admit that the phœnix without a nest is a bird absolutely without a perch, he must dissipate in the air. But—”
“Then I’ll make a cushion-cover of your flag, and you can rest on that.”
“No, I’m going to haul down the flag of perfect love.”