"Darling—that would be funnier than anything."
Her laughter darted at him, sudden and sweet and shrill, and it cut him to the heart. His gravity was now portentous.
"The beauty of it is," she persisted, defying all his gravity, "that, if I can go on, you won't have to make it. And I shall go on, I feel it; I feel myself going. I've got a dream, Owen, such a beautiful dream. Some day, instead of sitting there breaking your heart over those horrid paragraphs, instead of rushing down to Fleet Street in the rain and the sleet and the fog, you shall ramp up and down here, darling, making poems, and it won't matter if you wear the carpet out, if you wear ten carpets. You shall make poems all day long, and you—shall—never—write—another—paragraph again. You do them very badly."
"You needn't remind me of that," said Owen in his gloom.
"But, surely, you don't want to do them well?"
"You know what I want."
"You talk as if you hadn't got it."
She crouched down beside him and laid her face against his knee.
"I don't think it's nice of you," she said, "not to be pleased when I'm pleased."
His eyes lightened. His hand slid down to her and caressed her hair.