"It wouldn't be the vision and the dream, Jerry. You and I——"
"Well, what of it? It might be something better. Something neither of us ever had, really. It would be company."
"No, I've never had it." I remembered how blank the issue of my work had been to Helmeth Garrett.
"Well, then, ... we have years of work in us yet. I'll buy Polatkin out of the theatre." He was going off at a tangent of what we might do together, but I had thought of something more pertinent.
"We might solve the problem of how to keep our art and still be happy."
"We might." He was looking down on me with great content, but quite soberly. "Tell me, Olivia, suppose we shouldn't, even with the unhappiness, with all you have been through, would you rather be what you are, or like the others?" We were silent as we thought back across the years together; there was very little by this time that we did not know of one another.
"No," I said at last, "if being different meant being like the others, I'd not choose to have it any different."
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.