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You may comprehend her, in discourse with that familiar of hers, the Time Spirit, in a dialogue running somewhat as follows:
TIME SPIRIT: So, then, you’ve settled it with yourself? You haven’t too many regrets, I hope?
MRS. WHARTON: Oh, no, thank you. You can’t know what a sense of freedom, of satisfaction both outer and inner, it gives! You see, I always had, for ever so long, a few illusions—about myself and my own work, I mean.
TIME SPIRIT (dryly): Most writers do. But now that you are rid of them all, you aren’t finding it impossible to go on?
MRS. WHARTON: I find it far more possible to go on. I go on with ease and a lightness of heart. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t write now, that I mightn’t wake up and find myself to have written, except the kind of thing I once was determined to write. That sounds cloudy, no doubt; but what I mean is very simple: I discovered that, contrary to the old saying, it is life that is long and art that’s fleeting.
TIME SPIRIT: Yes?
MRS. WHARTON: Exactly. We live a long time, and we write for a time not so long but pretty long, too. If in those years of writing we achieve art once or twice, we are among the rare, fortunate ones.
TIME SPIRIT: And the rest of the time?
MRS. WHARTON: The rest of the time we must be industrious, but it is so much better if we are clear in our own minds about it.