“See! Create! Who? What?”
“The inhabitant, or inhabitants. Just think, you may have been building her up all this time, imagination by imagination, and thought by thought. Then her day might come, and all that you have put out piecemeal will return at once. Yes, she may appear, and take you, and possess you, and lead you——”
“She? Why she? and where?”
“To the devil, I imagine,” answered Mary composedly, “and as you are a man one can guess the guide’s sex. It’s getting dark, let us go out. This is such a creepy place in the dark that it actually makes me understand what people mean by nerves. And, Morris, of course you understand that I have only been talking rubbish. I always liked inventing fairy tales; you taught me; only this one is too grown up—disagreeable. What I really mean is that I do think it might be a good thing if you wouldn’t live quite so much alone, and would go out a bit more. You are getting quite an odd look on your face; you are indeed, not like other men at all. I believe that it comes from your worrying about this wretched invention until you are half crazy over the thing. Any change there?”
He shook his head. “No, I can’t find the right alloy—not one that can be relied upon. I begin to doubt whether it exists.”
“Why don’t you give it up—for a while at any rate?”
“I have. I made a novel kind of electrical hand-saw this spring, and sold the patent for £100 and a royalty. There’s commercial success for you, and now I am at work on a new lamp of which I have the idea.”
“I am uncommonly glad to hear it,” said Mary with energy. “And, I say, Morris, you are not offended at my silly parables, are you? You know what I mean.”
“Not a bit. I think it is very kind of you to worry your head about an impossible fellow like me. And look here, Mary, I have done some dreaming in my time, it is true, for so far the world has been a place of tribulation to me, and it is sick hearts that dream. But I mean to give it up, for I know as well as you do that there is only one end to all these systems of mysticism.” Mary looked up.
“I mean,” he went on, correcting himself, “to the mad attempt unduly and prematurely to cultivate our spiritual natures that we may live to and for them, and not to and for our natural bodies.”