human
An early promenade, Miss Vincent,
gpt
Oh! she said,
human
I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain of a great injury done to me.
gpt
You do me a high honour, exclaimed Joseph.
human
If I can do anything to alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me.
gpt
You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been done. You put me into your book.
human
Miss Vincent, protested Leveridge with vehemence,
gpt
That may be, or it may not. But you have taken strange liberties with me in transferring me to your pages.
human
And you really recognised yourself?
gpt
It is myself, my very self, who is there.
human
And yet you are here, before my humble self.
gpt
That is only my outer shell. All my individuality, all that goes to make up the Ego--I myself--has been taken from me and put into your book.
human
Surely that cannot be.
gpt
But it is so. I feel precisely as I suppose felt my doll when I was a child, when it became unstitched and all the bran ran out; it hung limp like a rag. But it is not bran you have deprived me of, it is my personality.
human
In my novel is your portraiture indeed--but you yourself are here,
gpt
It is my very self, my noblest and best part, my moral and intellectual self, which has been carried off and put into your book.
human
This is quite impossible, Miss Vincent.
gpt
A moment's thought, said she,
human
But----
gpt
No, she interrupted,
human
For Heaven's sake, do not say that.
gpt
I cannot say anything other. If I had a sovereign in my purse, and a pickpocket stole it, I should no longer have the purse and sovereign, only the pocket; and I am a mere pocket now without the coin of my personality that you have filched from me. Mr. Leveridge, it was a cruel wrong you did me, _when you used me up_.