"But imagination is n't reality."
"More real than reality itself sometimes. Look here, I 'm not a philanthropic cad and I don't mean to say too much, but I can say this: when a thinking man before he is twenty-five has run up hard against the only solid fact in this world—death, he somehow gets a grip on life and its meaning that others don't."
I waited for more. This was the Jamie of whom the depth of simplicity in "André's Odyssey" had given me a glimpse.
He straightened himself suddenly. "I want to say right here and now that if I have felt, and feel—as I can't help feeling, being the child of my time and subject to its tendencies—the burden of this life of ours as lived by all humankind, thank God, I can even when bowed in spirit, feel at times the 'rhythm of the universe' that adjusts, coordinates all—" He broke off abruptly, laughing at himself. "I 'm getting beyond my depth, Marcia?"
I shook my head. He smiled. "Well, then, I 'll get down to bed rock and say something more: you won't mind my mooning about and going off by myself and acting, sometimes, as if I had patented an aeroplane and could sustain myself for a few hours above the heads of all humanity—"
I laughed outright. "What do you mean, Jamie?"
"I mean that as I can't dig a trench, or cut wood, or run a motor bus, or be a member of a life-saving crew like other men, I 'm going to try to help a man up, and earn my living if I can, by writing out what I get in part through experience and mostly through imagination. There! Now I 've told you all there is to tell, except that I 've had something actually accepted by a London publisher; and if you 'll put up with my crotchets I 'll give you a presentation copy."
"Oh, Jamie!"
I was so glad for him that for the moment I found nothing more to say.
"'Oh, Jamie,'" he mimicked; then with a burst of laughter he threw himself full length on the sofa.