"Aren't you thinking of Quakers?" suggested Desire sweetly. "Besides you are not creating. You are compiling—a very different thing."
"But what is the use of compiling an off chapter when I know it is going to be an off one?"
Desire threw down her pencil.
"Oh, Benis," she said. "I don't like this. Don't let us play with words. Surely you are not getting tired—you can't be."
Her eyes, urgent and truth-compelling, forced an answer.
"I don't quite know," he said. "But I am certainly off work at present. There may be all kinds of reasons. You will have to be patient, Desire."
"Then," in a low voice, "it isn't only indolence?"
He was moved to candor. "It isn't indolence at all. I have always been a fairly good worker, and will be again. But the driving force has shifted. I have not been doing good work and I know it. The more I know it the worse the work will become.... It doesn't matter, really, child," he added gently, seeing that she had turned away. "The world can wait for the bit of knowledge I can give it."
Desire, whose face was invisible, took a moment to answer this. When she did her voice was carefully with-out expression.
"Then this ends my usefulness. You will not need me any more."