fighting chance to mate with youth
and--oh, exactly what you've got. I wish you had her--no, I'm damned if
I do. I may not be young enough for jealousy, but I am unregenerate
enough. I probably mean I wish I wished it. For in spite of my revolt
against the earth, I'd like to give Nan the cup, not of earth sorceries
but earth loveliness, and let her swig it to the bottom. And then, if
Old Crow's right and this is only a symbol and we've got to live by
symbols till we get the real thing, why, then I'm sentimental
enough--Victorian! yes, say it, and be hanged!--to want to believe Nan
and I shall some time--some time----Anyhow, I'm not going to ask her to
spend her middle years--just think! 'figure to yourself!'--when Nan's
forty, what will your revered uncle be?

"Now I've told you. This is the whole story, the outline of it. And why
do I tell you instead of merely inviting you to shut up as Nan did me?
Because if you retain in your dear meddlesome head any idea that Nan, as
you say, 'loves' me, you're to remember also that Nan is not in any
sense an Ariadne on a French clock, her arm over her head, deserted and
forlorn. You are to remember I adore her and, if I thought we could both
in a dozen years or so perish by shipwreck or Tenney's axe (poor
Tenney!) I should get down on my knees to her and beg her (can't you
hear our Nan laugh?) to let me marry her. (Probably she wouldn't, old
man--marry me, I mean. We're seldom as clever as we think, even you. So
there's that.) But, in spite of my erratic leanings toward Old Crow-ism
and sundry alarming dissatisfactions with the universe, I still retain
the common sense to see Nan, at forty, worrying over my advancing
arteriosclerosis and the general damned breaking up of my corporeal
frame. Not on your life. Now--shut up!

"Yes, your mother continues to be dissatisfied over your being there.
She thinks it's all too desultory, but is consoled at your being
mentioned in the same breath with 'two such distinguished Frenchmen.' I
tell her you can't stop for a degree, and maybe if you follow out your
destiny you'll get one anyway, and that, if you still want to write
books, this will give you something to write about. But she doesn't mind
so much since she's gone into politics, hammer and tongs."

Now this letter reached Richard Powell in the dingy office in Paris,
where he happened to be in consultation with his two advisers who were,
with an untiring genius of patience and foresig