There is so much unhappiness in the world . . .” she sighed again with astonishment. “To go through life, keeping yourself from becoming involved in it, to gather inspiration for your Work—ah, Mr. Gordon, how lucky you who create are. As for we others, the best we can hope is that sometime, somewhere, somehow we may be fortunate enough to furnish that inspiration, or the setting for it, at least. But, after all, that would be an end in itself, I think. To know that one had given her mite to Art, no matter how humble the mite or the giver . . . The humble laborer, Mr. Gordon: she, too, has her place in the scheme of things; she, too, has given something to the world, has walked where gods have trod. And I do so hope that you will find on this voyage something to compensate you for having been taken away from your Work.”
“Yes,” said Gordon again, staring at her with his arrogant uncomfortable stare. The man looks positively uncanny, she thought with a queer cold feeling within her. Like an animal, a beast of some sort. Her own gaze fluttered away and despite herself she glanced quickly over her shoulder to the reassuring group at the card table. Dorothy’s and Jenny’s young man’s legs swung innocent and rhythmic from the top of the wheelhouse, and as she looked Pete snapped his cigarette outward and into the dark water, twinkling.
“But to be a world in oneself, to regard the antics of man as one would a puppet show—ah, Mr. Gordon, how happy you must be.”
“Yes,” he repeated. Sufficient unto himself in the city of his arrogance, in the marble tower of his loneliness and pride, and . . . She coming into the dark sky of his life like a star, like a flame . . . O bitter and new . . . Somewhere within him was a far dreadful laughter, unheard; his whole life was become toothed with jeering laughter, and he faced the old woman again, putting his hand on her and turning her face upward
