"Or any other of the mighty poets in their misery and customary attics dead? I always wondered how they managed to stuff the broken window pane with a pair of trousers, though—"
But the visitor was talking unfrivolously. "Yes, the world's full of talent. Talent is nothing. Genius is nothing. These congenital amateurs who have nothing but genius give me a pain." He specified the corporal location of this pain. He continued: "It is the getting what you want that counts. And we have got a great deal—"
"I grant it: we belong, we also, to the race of go-getters. But then the bargain, I suspect, was for cash payment."
Now for an instant, through the two pairs of big round spectacles, as if with the magnified eyes of somewhat torpid insects, the two men were looking each at the other, in a slow sort of shared and unmirthful amusement. They said nothing. Then the visitor went on:
"Yes, we have paid a great deal, too. Still, here at almost fifty we have rather charming homes and bank accounts, and wives that continue to put up with us; and the books are done, quite as we wanted them done. There aren't many of us, you know: not many S.O.B.'s contrive to say that much unsmashed. No: we haven't paid for doing those books the full and usual price. We have slipped by, somehow—"
The other surmised pensively: "You mean, by that big Thing that doesn't approve of our getting our books done? I hadn't guessed He bothers you."
After a request for deific condemnation of the third personal singular neuter pronoun, the visitor stated he meant all the Things. "They don't like us, you know. They're as vicious as the bright young men."
"It is droll, how They seem," the host conceded, "to lurk behind you somewhere, watching, waiting, and—that's the worst,—so able to wait. They don't have, you see, to hurry. But you have to. So, with every book, when I unwrap the advance copies, I always feel, Well, I got that one done, anyway!"
"And we've slipped by Them!"
"So far," the other amended. And he exhibited his fingers crossed.