Sargon already liked this young man enormously. It was extremely reassuring and encouraging to meet such kindly acceptance and understanding after the chill and doubt and ugliness of the previous hour’s experiences. And it was nice and refreshing to have tea. A sort of grey insecurity, a threat of suppression that had come over his mind, vanished in this genial atmosphere. The shrivelled incognito expanded. The hidden mystery beneath it grew rich and full once more. This young man—he seemed ready to believe anything. Sargon walked up and down with his hands behind his back as if in the profoundest meditation. He would have muttered a few phrases in Sumerian, but for some reason he had quite forgotten that forgotten tongue.
“And so you write books?” he said regally.
“Not books,” Bobby answered over his shoulder; he was now toasting a circle of plum-bread. “Not books yet. But—it is ridiculous, isn’t it?—I am a bit of a poet and all that sort of thing, and a journalist of sorts. Just answers to correspondents—laborious, but a living.” He indicated the piles of letters on the deal table. “As for books—I have as a matter of fact started a novel—it’s on that desk—but that’s only in the last few days. And it’s so difficult to get a lot of time to oneself to really let oneself go with it.”
“Inspiration,” said Sargon understandingly.
“Well, one must let oneself go a bit, I suppose; particularly at first. But there’s always something one must do cropping up to prevent it.”
“With me also.”
“No doubt.”
“That is why,” said Sargon, “I am withdrawing into this solitude. To collect my forces. In Sumeria it was always the practice, before any great undertaking, to go out into the wilderness for a certain tale of days.”
“If I go out into the wilderness I get so lonely in the evenings,” said Bobby. “Ssh! That was the front door.”
He went out upon the staircase and stood listening.