Somehow or other it always makes me uncomfortable when people talk about my work. When they criticize I am annoyed and when they praise I am uneasy. What do they know about it? They spent an hour reading what it took me weeks to write. They don't know what I tried to do, nor do they care, they haven't time. I never feel so cut off from people, so utterly alone in the world, as when some benevolent person says, "I liked that little story of yours." Instantly I shut up like a clam.
"I liked it too," said Eleanore.
"Did you?" I asked delightedly. Far from retiring into my shell, I wanted at once to open up and make her feel how much I had missed in that crude effort. Soon she had me talking about it. And while I talked on eagerly, I tried to guess from her questions whether she'd read it more than once. Finally I guessed she had. And, glancing at her now and then, I wondered how much she could ever know about me or I about her—really know. And the intimacy I saw ahead loomed radiant and boundless. I strained every nerve to show her myself, to show her the very best of myself.
But then I heard her ask me,
"Wouldn't you like to talk to my father?"
Here was a fine end to it all.
"I don't know," I answered gloomily. I could see already those engineer eyes moving amusedly down my pages. I could see her watching his face and getting to feel as he did about me. "What good would it do?" I added.
"What good would it do?" Her sharply offended tone brought me back with a jerk to try to explain.
"Don't you see what I mean!" I asked eagerly. "Why should a man as busy as he is waste his time on a kid like me? After all that you've told me about him, I feel sometimes as though all the writers on earth don't count any more, because all the really big things are being done by men like your father."
"That's much better," said Eleanore. "Only of course it isn't true. If you poor little writers want to get big and really count," she went on serenely, "all you have to do is to write about my father."