Page:The beautiful and damned.djvu/35

 Rh : And energy—ambitious, well-directed energy. He's so entertaining—he's so tremendously stimulating and exciting. Often there's something breathless in being with him.


 * Oh, yes.

(Silence, and then:)


 * (With his thin, somewhat uncertain face at its most convinced) But not indomitable energy. Some day, bit by bit, it'll blow away, and his rather impressive talent with it, and leave only a wisp of a man, fretful and egotistic and garrulous.


 * (With laughter) Here we sit vowing to each other that little Dick sees less deeply into things than we do. And I'll bet he feels a measure of superiority on his side—creative mind over merely critical mind and all that.


 * Oh, yes. But he's wrong. He's inclined to fall for a million silly enthusiasms. If it wasn't that he's absorbed in realism and therefore has to adopt the garments of the cynic he'd be—he'd be credulous as a college religious leader. He's an idealist. Oh, yes. He thinks he's not, because he's rejected Christianity. Remember him in college? just swallow every writer whole, one after another, ideas, technic, and characters, Chesterton, Shaw, Wells, each one as easily as the last.


 * (Still considering his own last observation) I remember.


 * It's true. Natural born fetich-worshipper. Take art—


 * Let's order. He'll be—


 * Sure. Let's order. I told him—


 * Here he comes. Look—he's going to bump that waiter. (He lifts his finger as a signal—lifts it as though it were a soft and friendly claw.) Here y'are, Caramel.