“I don’t understand,” I said, rather coldly, when the silence became embarrassing. “You want me to ‘ghost’ for you?”
“‘Ghost,’ good gracious no,” he said, energetically; “dear me, no!”
“Then I really don’t understand,” I said.
“I thought you might see your ... I wanted you to collaborate with me. Quite publicly, of course, as far as the epithet applies.”
“To collaborate,” I said slowly. “You....”
I was looking at a miniature of the Farnese Hercules—I wondered what it meant, what club had struck the wheel of my fortune and whirled it into this astounding attitude.
“Of course you must think about it,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I muttered; “the idea is so new. It’s so little in my line. I don’t know what I should make of it.”
I talked at random. There were so many thoughts jostling in my head. It seemed to carry me so much farther from the kind of work I wanted to do. I did not really doubt my ability—one does not. I rather regarded it as work upon a lower plane. And it was a tremendous—an incredibly tremendous—opportunity.
“You know pretty well how much I’ve done,” he continued. “I’ve got a good deal of material together and a good deal of the actual writing is done. But there is ever so much still to do. It’s getting beyond me, as I said just now.”