"It's what you said to me three years ago, when Fungoids was published." 🔊 I flushed the more. 🔊 I need not have flushed at all. 🔊 "It's the only important thing I ever heard you say," he continued. 🔊 "And I've never forgotten it. 🔊 It's a true thing. 🔊 It's a horrible truth. 🔊 But—d'you remember what I answered? 🔊 I said, 'I don't care a sou for recognition.' 🔊 And you believed me. 🔊 You've gone on believing I'm above that sort of thing. 🔊 You're shallow. 🔊 What should you know of the feelings of a man like me? 🔊 You imagine that a great artist's faith in himself and in the verdict of posterity is enough to keep him happy. 🔊 You've never guessed at the bitterness and loneliness, the"—his voice broke; 🔊 but presently he resumed, speaking with a force that I had never known in him. 🔊 "Posterity! 🔊 What use is it to me? 🔊 A dead man doesn't know that people are visiting his grave, visiting his birthplace, putting up tablets to him, unveiling statues of him. 🔊 A dead man can't read the books that are written about him. 🔊 A hundred years hence! Think of it! 🔊 If I could come back to life then—just for a few hours—and go to the reading-room and read! 🔊 Or, better still, if I could be projected now, at this moment, into that future, into that reading-room, just for this one afternoon! 🔊 I'd sell myself body and soul to the devil for that! 🔊 Think of the pages and pages in the catalogue: 'Soames, Enoch' endlessly—endless editions, commentaries, prolegomena, biographies"— 🔊 But here he was interrupted by a sudden loud crack of the chair at the next table. 🔊 Our neighbor had half risen from his place. 🔊 He was leaning toward us, apologetically intrusive. 🔊

"Excuse—permit me," he said softly. 🔊 "I have been unable not to hear. Might I take a liberty? 🔊 In this little restaurant-sans-facon—might I, as the phrase is, cut in?" 🔊