"Was I? Won't you tell me just what you mean?"
"Don't you know?"
"Really I don't think I do. You see, when I used that expression that day, I was speaking only of the editorship—"
"But I was speaking of a theory of life. After all, the two things seem to have been bound together rather closely—just as you said."
He restored his pencil to his pocket, palpably pulled himself together, and proceeded:
"Oh, my theory was wholly rational—far more rational than yours; rationally it was perfect. It was a wholly logical recoil from the idleness, the lack of purpose, the slipshod self-indulgence under many names that I saw, and see, everywhere about me. I have work to do—serious work of large importance—and it seemed to me my duty to carry it through at all hazards. I need not add that it still seems so. Yet it was a life's work, already well along, and there was no need for me to pay an excessive price for mere speed. I elected to let everything go but intellect; I felt that I must do so; and in consequence, by the simplest sort of natural law, all the rest of me was shriveling up—had shriveled up, you will say. Yet I knew very well that my intellect was not the biggest part of me. I have always understood that.... Still, it seems that I required you to rediscover it for me in terms of everyday life...."
"No, no!" she interrupted, "I didn't do that. Most of it you did yourself. The start, the first push—don't you know?—it came from Fifi."
"Well," he said slowly, "what was Fifi but you again in miniature?"
"A great deal else," said Sharlee.
Her gaze fell. She sunk her chin upon her hand, and a silence followed, while before the mind's eye of each rose a vision of Fifi, with her wasted cheeks and great eyes.