“An artist,” she said.
He laughed. “That is too easy,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, looking at him with incredulous wide-open eyes and parted lips.
“Rose-Ann, I’ve always been an artist. That’s the trouble with me. I don’t say I’ve been a good artist. I’ve nothing to show for my art-ing except a barrelful of youthful poems, an unfinished novel that I burned up before I came to Chicago, and a few fantastic fragments of impossible plays. But I’ve been an artist all the same, and I’ll tell you why I’m sure of it. There are two kinds of people in the world—artists and human beings. I’ve never been a human being; so I must have been an artist. And I don’t want to be any longer!”
She looked at him, frightened at this heresy.
“But Felix!” she said.
“And I thought you were going to help me,” he said.
“To stop being an artist?” she cried, starting up as though a dreadful accusation had been flung at her.
“To be a human being,” he said, laughingly.
She looked at him with eyes of alarm.