lso. But now I must
hasten to seek out these mundane scribes, and see to it that they put
you in my book--for they have it about finished."

"Which one of them do you propose to have write me into the book?"

"Which one would you prefer?"

"I hardly know," she said. "That fellow Spain is a woman hater, and I am
afraid he will say something unkind about me. But that Hersey poet
prostitutes his art to flatter women. He has an exaggerated idea of the
importance of the sex consciousness in an intellectual woman's life.
Really, it is a choice between two evils."

"If that is the way you feel about it," said Gud, "perhaps I had better
write you into the book myself."

"Could you really? Oh, Gud! I would die of joy to be written by you; not
even a movie actress ever had a celestial press agent!"

"I'll try," said Gud, "that is, if you will tarry with me as I write."

"Do you mean that I would inspire you?"

"Exactly."

"That is what they all say!"

"Then it must be true."

"But why do you not say something original, since you are Gud?"

"Because I am talking to you."

"You old brute!"

"Perhaps so, but a straight line is the shortest distance between two
points."

"Oh, I like that," cried she who had sought for mystery. "It sounds so
original, and I am sure that no one can understand it--what does it
mean?"

"It means," said Gud, "that you and I have very much in common that
quite transcends the reach and grasp of men."

"You flatter me."

"But really, that is true."

"Then quick, write it down before you lose the inspiration."

"But I have nothing on which to write," said Gud.

She blushed and turned away from him, and tore the whiteness from her
bosom, and turned again toward Gud and handed him the whiteness that had
covered up the secrets of her heart.

Gud took the whiteness of her bosom and thereupon he began to write,
while she lay down upon the other side of the pool, and hid her bosom
away from Gud, lest, now with its whiteness gone, he might see the color
of her heart.

And so Gud, who is made in the image of man, became as a man. And as he
wrote he forgot the woman, for when a pen is in the hand of man or god,
the light that lies in woman's eyes burns dim as some brief candle.

And this indeed is the paradox of all who wield the treacherous weapon:
that man sets out to write, some woman's heart to flutter; and having
struck pen to paper, if there be anything in him that rises o'er the