"And what does it mean, Charmian?"
"Good sir, the sibyl hath spoken! Find her meaning for yourself."
"You have called me, on various occasions, a 'creature,' a
'pedant'--very frequently a 'pedant,' and now, it seems I am an
'egoist,' and all because--"
"Because you think too much, Peter; you never open your lips
without having first thought out just what you are going to say;
you never do anything without having laboriously mapped it all
out beforehand, that you may not outrage Peter Vibart's
tranquillity by any impulsive act or speech. Oh! you are always
thinking and thinking--and that is even worse than stirring, and
stirring at your tea, as you are doing now." I took the spoon
hastily from my cup, and laid it as far out of reach as possible.
"If ever you should write the book you once spoke of, it would be
just the very sort of book that I should--hate."
"Why, Charmian?"
"Because it would be a book of artfully turned phrases; a book in
which all the characters, especially women, would think and speak
and act by rote and rule--as according to Mr. Peter Vibart; it
would be a scholarly book, of elaborate finish and care of
detail, with no irregularities of style or anything else to break
the monotonous harmony of the whole--indeed, sir, it would be a
most unreadable book!"
"Do you think so, Charmian?" said I, once more taking up the
teaspoon.
"Why, of course!" she answered, with raised brows; "it would
probably be full of Greek and Latin quotations! And you would
polish and rewrite it until you had polished every vestige of
life and spontaneity out of it, as you do out of yourself, with
your thinking and thinking."
"But I never quote you Greek or Latin; that is surely something,
and, as for thinking, would you have me a thoughtless fool or an
impulsive ass?"
"Anything rather than a calculating, introspective philosopher,
seeing only the mote in the sunbeam, and nothing of the glory."
Here she gently disengaged the teaspoon from my fingers and laid
it in her own saucer, having done which she sighed, and looked at
me with her head to one side. "Were they all like you, Peter, I
wonder--those old philosophers, grim and stern, and terribly
repressed, with burning eyes, Peter, and with very long chins?
Epictetus was, of course!"
"And you dislike Epictetus, Charmian?"
"I detest him! He was just the kind of person, Peter, who, being
unable to sleep, would have wandered out into a terrible
thunderstorm, in the middle of the night, and, being cold and wet
and clammy, Peter, would have drawn moral lessons, and made
epigrams upon the thunder and lightning. Epictetus, I am quite
sure, was a--person!"