“You’ll have to show us,” said Maud. “A man who is a sculptor, and who knows what this means, is certainly bound to produce statues which are really like Greek statues.”
Tom sat up.
“I don’t care how conceited it sounds,” he said excitedly, “but I am going to try to do no less. It is astonishing how little I care what happens. That is my aim, and if I don’t realize it, it will be the fault of something I can’t control.”
“But what is there which a man who is earnest cannot control?” she asked.
“There is only one question in the world which is even harder to answer,” said Tom, “and that is, what is there in the world which he can control? What is to happen to me if some morning I wake up to find that I think Manvers’ statuettes ideal, and Greek art passé? How do I know it will not happen to me? Who will assure me of it?”
“Oh well, how do you know that you won’t wake up some morning, and find that your nose has disappeared during the night, and a hand grown in its place?” asked Maud. “The one is as unnatural to your mind as the other is to the body.”
“But all sorts of unnatural things happen to your mind,” said Tom. “That I should have suddenly felt that nothing but Greek art was worth anything was just as unnatural. It is just as unnatural that, at a given moment, a man falls in love——”
He stopped quite suddenly and involuntarily, but Maud’s voice broke in.
“Not at all,” she said. “You see, it happens to most men; it is the rule rather than the exception, whereas the disappearance of one’s nose would be unique, I should think.”
Her voice was so perfectly natural, so absolutely unaffected, that Tom made a short mental note, to the effect that Manvers was the greatest idiot in the world except one, which was a more consoling thought than he would have imagined possible. His determination to be quite normal had become entirely superfluous—a billetless bullet.