“What about Vestné?”
“She neither drags me back nor pulls me forward. We walk evenly together, pace for pace.”
“Have you many cities as grand as this?” I questioned, gazing out of the window and seeing, from where I sat, the turrets of many beautiful buildings without.
“Oh, yes. Their name is legion, and they are all built on different principles. It is a pity that you refuse to take medicine. I think you would enjoy being here after a time.”
“I had as lief pass away,” I asserted. “If I am to be other than myself I am the more content with a total dissolution.”
“And Deborah?”
“I cannot say,” I answered. “Being powerless, I am speechless.”
“You should have taken my advice and left her long ago. Or you should have cultivated writing moral stories for young girls; it would have been amusing.”
“I never appreciated young girls. If they are not moral without reading moral stories, they never will be.”
“I think,” he said, after a pause, “I will write a biography of myself, it seems to be the fashion.”