orbed that
you forgot everything else on earth--and everybody?"

"That's true enough. But if it's a mere question of happiness, that's
not the sort that lasts, and the reaction is frightful. I am beginning
to feel a hideous sense of loss and wish I had it to do all over again."

"You can go to work on another."

"I'll never feel to another play as I have to this."

"That's what every artist has said to himself since the gods plucked
out a rib and invented the breed. Even if you do your comedy next your
submergence will be precisely the same. It's the creative pot boiling
that does the business."

"I don't believe it."

"Well, don't, then. And don't wake up as blue as paint tomorrow
morning. Reaction is the price we all have to pay for keeping the
brain too long at a pitch so high above the normal. It's the downwash
of blood from the organ it has kept at fever heat. And it's a long
sight less commonplace than reaction from too much love-making.
Especially when love-making has begun to pall--which it does sooner in
artists than in ordinary men. . . . Writers begin life all over again
with each new release of the creative faculty; and each new work is as
enthralling as the last. But love!" She sighed. "You don't look as
if I had made the slightest impression on you."

"You haven't. A man can combine both if a woman cannot. You forget
that we return here after two or three months in Austria, and here we
remain for at least two years."

"Why are you so sure of that? Have you her actual promise?"

"It is understood. I told her we should return and she knew that I
meant what I said."

"It is quite likely that she knew you meant it! But I'd like you to
promise me that you will ask her to tell you exactly what she does
intend to do--when the honeymoon is over."

"What do you mean?" Clavering asked sharply.

"I mean, that although she told me nothing of her plans, it was
perfectly evident from her conversation that she intends to live her
life in Europe and play a great role there. I infer that she is in
constant correspondence with political friends in Austria. Do you mean
that she has never told you this?"

Clavering sat forward, frowning. "No. We--have had little time
together and have not wasted it on politics. Did she tell you this?"

"Not she. But I 'got' it. I can't tell you just how, but my
intuitions are pretty good."

"Intuitions be hanged. Your creative tract is prepared for