human
Well, at any rate, I think you look awfully nice--quite handsome! I expect Tora's just afraid of your being too fascinating in your best clothes.
gpt
Pretty cheerful, Winnie?
human
Not so very particularly. I do feel her loss awfully, you know. I was very fond of her, and it seems to leave me so adrift. I had an anchorage here, but the anchor won't hold any more.
gpt
Come and anchor at Shaylor's Patch. The anchor always holds there for you.
human
I can't deny I've been thinking of you rather wistfully in these melancholy days, but it seems like--like giving up.
gpt
Not a bit of it. You can be absolutely in the thick of the fight there, if you like. He looked across at her with his whimsical smile.
human
I'm actually going to do something at last, Winnie. I'm about to start on my life's work. I'm going to do a Synopsis of Social Philosophy.
gpt
It sounds like a life's work,
human
Yes, it's a big job, but I'm a healthy man. You see, I shall take all the great fellows from the earliest time down to to-day, and collect from them everything that bears on the questions that we of to-day have to face--not worrying about their metaphysics and that sort of stuff, but taking what bears on the things we've really got to settle--the live things, you know. See the idea? There'll be a section on Education, for instance, one on Private Property, one on Marriage, one on Women and Labour. I want it to reach the masses, so all the excerpts will be in English. Then each section will have an appendix, in which I shall collate the excerpts, and point out the main lines of agreement and difference. Perhaps I shall add a few suggestions of my own.
gpt
I think you very likely will, Stephen.
human
Now don't you think it's a ripping idea? Of course I shall take in poetry and novels and plays, as well as philosophers and historians. A comparison between Lecky and Ibsen, for instance! Bound to be fruitful! Oh, it'll be a big job, but I mean to put it through. He leant forward to her.
gpt
That's not giving up, is it? That's fighting! And the point is--you can help me. You see, there'll be no end of books to read, just to see if there's anything of possible use in them. You can do lots of spade-work for me. Besides, you've got very good judgment.
human
Wouldn't Tora help you better than I could?
gpt
I wouldn't trust Tora, and I've told her so plainly. She's so convinced of what she thinks herself that she considers the other view all nonsense--or, if she did hit on a particularly clever fellow who put the case too well against her, it's my firm belief that she'd have no scruple about suppressing him. Yours is much more the mind for me. We're inquirers, not dogmatists, you and I. With you, and a secretary learned in tongues, and a couple of typewriters, we shall make a hole in the work in no time.