He was silent and the girl looked at him curiously, waiting for him to say more.
“They’d be a bit surprised, wouldn’t they,” he burst out, “if they knew about the manuscripts he”—he uttered this last word with concentrated reverence,—“is guarding for me over there? He understands me, Phil, and not a living person except him. Listen, Phil! Since I’ve known you I’ve been able to breathe—just able to breathe—in this damned England. Before that—God! I shudder to think of it—I was dumb, strangled, suffocated, paralyzed, dead. Even now—even with you, Phil,—I’m still fumbling and groping after it—after what I have to say to the world, after my secret, my idea!
“It hurts me, my idea. You know that feeling, Phil. But I’m getting it into order—into shape. Look here!”
He pulled out of his pocket a small thick notebook closely written, blurred with erasures and insertions, stained with salt-water.
“That’s what I’ve done since I’ve known you—in this last month—and it’s better than anything I’ve written before. It’s clearer. It hits the mark more crushingly. Phil, listen to me! I know I’ve got it in me to give to the world something it’s never dreamed of—something with a real madness of truth in it—something with a bite that gets to the very bone of things. I know I’ve got that in me.”
He stooped down and picked up a stranded jelly-fish that lay—a mass of quivering, helpless iridescence—in the scorching sun. He stepped into the water till it was over his shoes and flung the thing far out into the oily sea. It sank at once to the bottom, leaving a small circle of ripples.
“Go on, go on!” cried the girl, looking at him with eyes that darkened and grew more insatiable as she felt his soul stir and quiver and strip itself before her.
“Go on! Tell me more about Nance.”
“I have told you,” he muttered, “I’ve told you everything. She’s good and faithful and kind. She gives me love—oh, endless love!—but that’s not what I want. She no more understands me than I understand—eternity! Little Linda reads me better.”