"Perhaps," she spoke dubiously.

"And if you were in my book, would it not then contain something that no one could understand?"

"Do you mean it?" she faltered.

"Yes, dear child, for whom all writers write, if it will bring me one more smile from those ever-changing eyes of beauty--I will see that you are in '_The Book of Gud_'--if I have to catch these blasphemous scribes and pound their heads together!"

"For that promise," said the iridescent lady, "I could love you forever and a day. To think that we two should be in a book together! Just me and Gud!

"And now," she added, in a lower tone, "I'll confess to you why I want to be in the book. You see, I am supposed to be a literary character and one has to be in a book to be a literary character, you know."

"Yes, yes, I know. I suppose it will make me one also. 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 prost.i.tutes his art to flatter women. He has an exaggerated idea of the importance of the s.e.x 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 G.o.d, 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 damp swamp of woman's kisses, then of a truth the instrument that she put into his hand becomes a knife to sever the cords with which she sought to bind him.

Such is the tragedy of her who flutters near while men make words on paper, that in their youth they write for her; and their youth gone, they still write on beyond the reaches of her soul.

And so, as Gud wrote upon the whiteness torn from a woman's bosom, he forgot quite utterly the woman herself, who lay by the pool trembling and suffering and trying to hide her heart from Gud.

And when she saw that he had forgotten her--even though he had told her he wanted her near him and needed her for inspiration--she suffered so that her heart died within her, and she shrank and withered and fell into the pool of the fountain, and, as a brown leaf, floated on the surface of the water.

Chapter LXX

When Gud had finished that which he was writing he arose and looked about him. He seemed to be searching for something, but could not recall what it was, and decided that it was of no importance.

He drew on his sandals and made ready to go upon his way. But the way was long and Gud recalled that he had been weary and had been athirst.

So he knelt by the fountain and stooped over it to drink.

There was a brown leaf floating on the water, but he swished it away and drank his fill from the flowing fountain. Then Gud arose and girded up his loins and went on his way along the Impossible Curve.

Chapter LXXI

I met an old man walking through the sky, A sort of startled twinkle in his eye.

"And who are you?" asked I.

"I am Gud," replied he, with a frown.

"Which one?" I asked, polite but terse, But without answer he went shrieking down The shadowy s.p.a.ces of the universe.