“You are a Puritan!”
“It’s not that.... I want the feeling of other minds resisting the impact of my own, as sword clashes with sword. How can I know whether my ideas are true unless they are put to that test? But I’m let think as I please. It’s not a battle, it’s a sleight-of-hand performance. It’s vaudeville.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way about your work, Felix.”
“You want to throw up your job, Rose-Ann. Why shouldn’t I?”
She could not quite tell whether he meant it or not.
“And write?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. But that’s not enough. I’m going to do something hard.—Oh, I could be what’s called a literary artist ... the mot juste and all that; that’s easy, too. One has only to be sufficiently bored or unhappy.... No, I want to deal with something harder than words. I want to build something with my hands—a house, for instance. Why not?”
She leaned forward, smiling. It was sufficiently clear that he was not in earnest. “Where will you build your house?”
“Not in this golden land where it is always afternoon. And not too near Chicago, either. Do you remember the Dunes where we picnicked last summer? There, perhaps. Away from everything.”
“I know where you mean. Yes. What kind of house will you build?”