“I will, I assure you, the moment your book is published. But why do you keep talking about your paragraph? why do you not read me what you have written?”
“I have just done so,” replied the Sphinx. “I have not been talking. I have been reading ever since I said, ‘Do you not be vexed’ and now I have read you the whole paragraph.”
Gerald said, “Oh!” He scratched his long chin a bit blankly. He approached the monster, and leaning over one forepaw, he read for himself in that black ledger the paragraph of the Sphinx.
Then Gerald said, “But what comes next?”
“Were I to answer that question you would be wiser than I. And of course nobody can ever be wiser than the Sphinx.”
“But is that as far as you have yet written?”
“It is as far as anybody has written,” said the Sphinx, “as yet.”
“In all these centuries you have not got beyond that one paragraph?”
“Now, do you not see my difficulty? I needed an opening paragraph which would sum up all things, so to speak, and all the human living which men keep pestering me to explain. And when I had written it there was not anything left over to put in the second paragraph.”
“But, oh, dear me! This is materialism! this is flat sacrilege committed in the actual presence of a god! I am embarrassed, ma’am. I hardly know which way to look before the spectacle of such conduct. For you fill your page, with your ambiguous paragraph—”