The girl also was very silent.
With what wonderful attributes his enemy, Imagination, was busily endowing the girl beside him in the starlight, there is no knowing. His muse was Thalomene, slim daughter of Zeus; and whether she was really still on Olympus or here beside him he scarcely knew, so perfectly did this young girl inspire him, so exquisitely did she fill the bill.
"It is odd," he said, after a long while, "that merely a few hours with you should inspire me more than I have ever been inspired in all my life."
"That," she said unsteadily, "is your imagination."
At the hateful word, imagination, Brown seemed to awake from the spell. Then he sat up straight, rather abruptly.
"The thing to do," he said, still confused by[142] his awakening, "is to consider you impersonally and make notes of everything." And he fumbled for pencil and note-book, and, rising, stepped across to the front door, where a light was burning.
Standing under it he resolutely composed his thoughts; but to save his life he could remember nothing of which to make a memorandum.
This worried him, and finally alarmed him. And so long did he stand there, note-book open, pencil poised, and a sickly expression of dismay imprinted upon his otherwise agreeable features, that the girl rose at last from her chair, glanced in through the door at him, and then came forward.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"The matter is," said Brown, "that I don't seem to have anything to write about."