"Perhaps I shall." She surveyed his tray. "I've forgotten the cream for your coffee."
"I don't take cream. Oh, please don't go. I want you to see my books and my other belongings."
He had brought dozens of books, a few pictures, a little gilded Chinese god, a bronze bust of Napoleon.
"Everything has a reason for being dragged around with me. That etching of Helleu's is like my little sister, Mimi, who is at school in a convent, and who constitutes my whole family. The gilded Chinese god is a mascot—the Napoleon intrigues the imagination."
"Do you think so much of Napoleon?" coldly. "He was a little great man. I'd rather talk to my children of George Washington."
"You women have a grudge against him because of Josephine."
"Yes. He killed something in himself when he put her from him. And the world knew it, and his downfall began. He forgot that love is the greatest thing in the world."
How lovely she was, all fire and feeling!
"Jove," he said, staring, "if you could write, you'd make people sit up and listen. You've kept your dreams. That's what the world wants—the stuff that dreams are made of. And most of us have lost ours by the time we know how to put things on paper."