"It has to do with my work—indirectly—"
She glanced sideways at him, and remained for a moment curiously observant.
"How is the work going, anyway?" she asked.
He hesitated. "I've apparently come up slap against a blank wall. It isn't easy to explain how I feel—but I've no confidence in myself—"
"You! No confidence? How absurd!"
"It's true," he said a little sullenly.
"You are having a spasm of progressive development," she said, calmly. "You take it as a child takes teething—with a squirm and a mental howl instead of a physical yell."
He laughed. "I suppose it's something of that sort. But there's more—a self-distrust amounting to self-disgust at moments…. Stephanie, I want to do something good—"
"You have—dozens of times."
"People say so. The world forgets what is really good—" he made a nervous gesture—"always before us poor twentieth-century men looms the goal guarded by the vast, austere, menacing phantoms of the Masters."