She held her breath a moment. "How very beautiful!" she then said. "How very beautiful! And how kind you are to think of me like that! But why is it a prison-house? You of all people—"
"It isn't living, you see. It's existence in caricature over there. It's like dining perpetually with Madame Tussaud's waxworks, or anything else totally unreal and incredible."
"But I don't understand how a great artist—"
"And you're like an open window, like the sky, like sweet air, like freedom, like secret light—"
"Oh," she murmured, deprecating but enchanted.
"When I'm with you I feel an intolerable disgust for all the chatter and flatulence of that other life."
"And when I'm with you," she said, "I feel as if I were stuffed with—oh, with stars."
He was silent a moment. Then, determined not to be outdone, he said:
"When I'm with you I begin to feel like a star myself."
"As though you weren't always one."