"Of course I don't really think about writing," he said, as he poured the cold water into the coffee. "Even if my things ever were decent, I don't think the magazines would take them, and the magazines are one's only chance. I read somewhere, too, that Marie Corelli's about the only person who makes a thing out of literature. I'm certain it wouldn't pay me.""I never mentioned the word 'pay,'" said Mr. Pembroke uneasily.
"You must not consider money. There are ideals too.""I have no ideals."
Rickie!" she exclaimed. "Horrible boy!"
"No, Agnes, I have no ideals." Then he got very red, for it was a phrase he had caught from Ansell, and he could not remember what came next.
"The person who has no ideals," she exclaimed, "is to be pitied.""I think so too," said Mr. Pembroke, sipping his coffee. "Life without an ideal would be like the sky without the sun."Rickie looked towards the night, wherein there now twinkled innumerable stars--gods and heroes, virgins and brides, to whom the Greeks have given their names.
"Life without an ideal--" repeated Mr. Pembroke, and then stopped, for his mouth was full of coffee grounds. The same affliction had overtaken Agnes. After a little jocose laughter they departed to their lodgings, and Rickie, having seen them as far as the porter's lodge, hurried, singing as he went, to Ansell's room, burst open the door, and said, "Look here!
Whatever do you mean by it?"
"By what?" Ansell was sitting alone with a piece of paper in front of him. On it was a diagram--a circle inside a square, inside which was again a square.
"By being so rude. You're no gentleman, and I told her so." He slammed him on the head with a sofa cushion. "I'm certain one ought to be polite, even to people who aren't saved." ("Not saved" was a phrase they applied just then to those whom they did not like or intimately know.) "And I believe she is saved. Inever knew any one so always good-tempered and kind. She's been kind to me ever since I knew her. I wish you'd heard her trying to stop her brother: you'd have certainly come round. Not but what he was only being nice as well. But she is really nice. And I thought she came into the room so beautifully. Do you know--oh, of course, you despise music--but Anderson was playing Wagner, and he'd just got to the part where they sing 'Rheingold!
'Rheingold! and the sun strikes into the waters, and the music, which up to then has so often been in E flat--""Goes into D sharp. I have not understood a single word, partly because you talk as if your mouth was full of plums, partly because I don't know whom you're talking about.""Miss Pembroke--whom you saw."
"I saw no one."
"Who came in?"
"No one came in."
"You're an ass!" shrieked Rickie. "She came in. You saw her come in. She and her brother have been to dinner.""You only think so. They were not really there.""But they stop till Monday."
"You only think that they are stopping."
"But--oh, look here, shut up! The girl like an empress--""I saw no empress, nor any girl, nor have you seen them.""Ansell, don't rag."
"Elliot, I never rag, and you know it. She was not really there."There was a moment's silence. Then Rickie exclaimed, "I've got you. You say--or was it Tilliard?--no, YOU say that the cow's there. Well--there these people are, then. Got you. Yah!""Did it never strike you that phenomena may be of two kinds: ONE, those which have a real existence, such as the cow; TWO, those which are the subjective product of a diseased imagination, and which, to our destruction, we invest with the semblance of reality? If this never struck you, let it strike you now."Rickie spoke again, but received no answer. He paced a little up and down the sombre roam. Then he sat on the edge of the table and watched his clever friend draw within the square a circle, and within the circle a square, and inside that another circle, and inside that another square.
"Whv will you do that?"
No answer.
"Are they real?"
"The inside one is--the one in the middle of everything, that there's never room enough to draw."