eanwhile to think for both of us."

"Very cousinly, but I can think for myself."

She had risen, but he stood with his back against the door for a moment.

"Another thing--" he said. "You need a buffer. You have remarkable
powers, and you might realize some of your dreams if the prospect of
initiatives did not alarm your secretly feminine soul. The two of us
together could conquer the world. Now go ahead and dream until dreams
pall and I have more time."

XXXVIII

"Ibsen will live, not as a dramaturgist, but as the greatest professor
of dramaturgy the world has ever known." "Only one way left to be
original--never write about Italy." "When we say that a man is a high
type what we really mean is that he is the great exception to the type."
"That progressive type of bore--the man with a grievance." "San
Francisco is the cradle and the grave of more genius than ever was
packed into any city, ancient or modern. It is like our money, 'easy
come, easy go.'" "And more Hell." "An epigram is only to be forgiven
when a memorable thought is packed into a phrase that sticks."

As Isabel and Gwynne escaped from the little Italian restaurant into the
blare and glare of the street, their heads were ringing with much
brilliant if somewhat affected talk. They had sat with their hosts at
the "newspaper table." It was the fashion at the moment to express life
in paradoxes, and with a nice adjustment of commas and colons. There had
been no talk of politics in this Bohemia, nor of society; nor yet of
other subjects that commanded its attention when the long day gave place
to the shorter night: the women present were respectable, many of them
wives, and not a few went into society when they chose. There was much
talk of the fads with which the world was ridden, never a reference to
the literature or art of the past; and there was something almost
pathetic in the prostration of these brilliant young men, who had never
crossed the boundaries of their State, to European groups, some of whose
members were already passe, but still loomed gigantic from the far edge
of the Pacific. Few American writers are popular in California, however
they may be read; and the reason, no doubt, lies in the mixed blood to
which all Europe has contributed, and which is full of affinities little
experienced by the rest of the country. Even the famous cooking is
un-American. The French, Italian, and Spanish restaurants are exactly
what they claim to be;