I
"In the prison house are many mansions. This one looks very nice—thank the good Sheriff for me, for us, Cecil. Is it wired for sound?"
"No, dear, it's just an office. Sheriff's working late down the hall—records room—and said we could have this. Nobody'll bother us."
"May I sit at the desk and judge humanity?"
"Why not?"
"Or I'll be a lady of the Abbey of Theleme, where the law was 'Do what thou wilt.' No—can't have anything like that going on in the Sheriff's own office. And still—flowers on the desk?"
"The explanation is anticlimax. Sheriff's good-looking, has a devoted secretary, her brother-in-law runs a florist's shop."
"Like that. Never mind, I hereby make-believe the flowers are for me, the blood-red roses and the little white ones, sweet hot-house children. Not quite real, are they?—no black-spot, no bitten leaves, sheltered children, I guess they don't understand. But I'll make-believe. Am I occasionally beautiful, Cecil?"
"To me, always."
"I've always loved words, you know. It amounts to a fault. I can't make them do as I wish. I could never write. I don't know enough about people, maybe never shall. But I know the power of words. You say I'm beautiful to you, and that makes me so, I believe it, the words shut away everything foreign to the Abbey of Theleme—no, that's not where we are. But isn't it strange what words can do? Comfort and terrify, heal and kill. Make out of nothing, something, and another word can send the something back to a nothing. It was my father's gift, that love of words. I was reading precociously at least a year before he died. Mother (who is definitely literate and past president of the local PTA, no kidding) felt it wasn't quite right at such an age."