“I’m tired of talking.... Al, you take up too much time! I’ll never amount to anything with you around. You’re always bursting into my nice, quiet little art world, and you’re so earnest and busy and disturbing!”
“I know it!” he said, contritely. “It’s one of my limitations, old girl. I don’t appreciate art in any shape. I don’t take it seriously. But I do take you and your development seriously. Very seriously. You go ahead with your own work, and I’ll try to shut up about mine. We’ll let each other alone, and just love each other.”
“Love’s a terrible disturbance!”
“It shouldn’t be. It ought to be peace and completion. It’s a help to me. Why, do you know, I have ten years’ work planned out—three books. I have the data ready, but I haven’t begun them yet. I’ve never worked so well in my life. And it’s simply because I’ve found you, after looking for you all my life.”
She smiled at him.
“But you see, I never expected you!” she said. “I never looked for you! You’re a surprise—and a nuisance!”
She seized his hair in both hands and pulling down his head, kissed him roughly.
“And yet I suppose you’re a sort of help,” she said. “Because I’m determined to astonish you. I’m going to spoil all your nice peace and satisfaction, and trouble you and worry you and make you think about me and nothing else!”
“Perhaps I’m still a little dazzled and stupid by having got you,” he said. “But don’t think for a moment I take you for granted. You’re the greatest wonder in the world to me. You’re not the companion woman I thought I wanted. You’re not a pal. You’ll never be a friend. You’re strange to me, and you always will be. When I look at you, I see some sense in poetry. I know what those fellows mean with that woman-worship I used to hate so.”
“I am a friend to you!”