“Do you know what this reminds me of?” she said. “All this talk of ours? It reminds me of how we used to talk over those first poems of yours. You have gone a long way since then.”
“I have gone to Kaiserville and back.”
“You know what I mean. I mean your work has improved wonderfully. You write with a sure hand now, it seems to me. And your view is so much broader.”
“I hope I'm not the narrow, conceited little rooster I used to be. I told you, Helen, that the war handed me an awful jolt. Well, it did. I think it, or my sickness or the whole business together, knocked most of that self-confidence of mine galley-west. For so much I'm thankful.”
“I don't know that I am, altogether. I don't want you to lose confidence in yourself. You should be confident now because you deserve to be. And you write with confidence, or it reads as if you did. Don't you feel that you do, yourself? Truly, don't you?”
“Well, perhaps, a little. I have been at it for some time now. I ought to show some progress. Perhaps I don't make as many mistakes.”
“I can't see that you have made any.”
“I have made one . . . a damnable one.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing. I didn't mean to say that. . . . Helen, do you know it is awfully good of you to take all this interest in me—in my work, I mean. Why do you do it?”