Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/90

 Since they had left the town behind they had been walking in silence, broken first by Lennie: I love this road.

So do I, Gareth conceded. Nobody ever paints or writes about Iowa. Why not, do you suppose?

Why don't you do that, Gareth? A wistful note, not inherent in the phrase itself, obtruded itself into Lennie's query.

O, I can't write yet. . . at least not like a regular author. I try to, but I always destroy what I have written. You have made me see what there is in literature, set some kind of standard for me. I'm afraid it's too high for me to reach.

You're very young, Gareth. You've got lots of time.

Of course, I'm young, he replied, but it doesn't make it any better to be young when I'm so self-critical. I find more fault with what I have done than a critic would, at any rate a critic who took into consideration my age and inexperience. But that doesn't make things any better. Probably as I grow older and my writing improves I'll become still more critical. Will there ever come a time, do you think, when I won't just have to tear things up?

O, Gareth, of course, there will. Lennie spoke with some heat. You'll write splendidly some day. Some of your themes. ..

They were all rotten. I was reading some of