And what a job it must be, too,
the writing of a book! He had never realised it before. A real book,
then, meant putting one's heart into sentences, telling one's inmost
secrets, confessing one's own ideals with fire and lust and passion.
That was the difference perhaps between literature and mere facile
invention. His cousin had never dared do this before; shyness
prevented; his intellect wove pretty patterns that had no heat of life
in them. But now he had discovered a big idea, true as the sun, and
able, like the sun, to warm thousands of readers, all ready for it
without knowing it. ...
Rogers sat on thinking in the bright spring sunshine, smoking one
cigarette after another. For the idea his cousin had wumbled over so
fubsily had touched his heart, and for a long time he was puzzled to
find the reason. But at length he found it. In that startling phrase
'a childless woman' lay the clue. A childless woman was like a vessel
with a cargo of exquisite flowers that could never make a port.
Sweetening every wind, she yet never comes to land. No harbour
welcomes her. She sails endless seas, charged with her freight of
undelivered beauty; the waves devour her glory, her pain, her lovely
secret all unconfessed. To bring such a woman into port, even
imaginatively in a story, or subconsciously in an inner life, was
fulfilment of a big, fine, wholesome yearning, sacred in a way, too.
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