"Question No. 2. I haven't any plans of my own at present and I am quite eligible to the thing you suggest. You say that no one wants to read anything about the war. I don't blame them. I wish I could fall asleep for a month and wake up with no recollection of it. I suppose it's that state of mind which prevents people from writing their recollections immediately. Of course we'll all do that ultimately, I suppose--even people who, like myself, aren't professional writers. Don't imagine that I'm going on with the writing game. I haven't the divine afflatus. I'm just letting myself drift along with these two jobs until I get that _guerre_ out of my system; can look around to find what I really want to do. I'm willing to write my experiences within a reasonable interval; but not at once. Everything is as vivid in my mind of course as it's possible to be; but I don't want to have to think of it. That's why your suggestion in regard to Lutetia Murray strikes me so favorably. I should really like to do that biography. I'm in the mood for something gentle and pastoral. And then of course I have a sense of proprietorship in regard to Lutetia, not alone because she was my literary find or that it was my thesis on her which got me my A in English 12. But, in addition, I developed a sort of platonic, long-distance, with-the-eye-of-the-mind-only crush on her. And yet, I don't know...." Again Lindsay's eyes came up from his paper. For the third time he ignored Washington Square swarming with lumbering green busses and dusky-haired Italian babies; puppies, perambulators, and pedestrians. Again his glance went mechanically to the door leading to the back of the apartment. "You certainly have left an atmosphere in this joint, Spink. Somehow I feel always as if you were in the room. How it would be possible for such a pop-eyed, freckle-faced Piute as you to pack an astral body is more than I can understand. It's here though--that sense of your presence. The other day I caught myself saying, 'Oh, Spink!' to the empty air. But to return to Lutetia, I can't tell you how the prospect tempts. Once on a _permission_ in the spring of '16, I finds myself in Lyons. There are to be gentle acrobatic doings in the best Gallic manner in the Park on Sunday. I gallops out to see the sports. One place, I comes across several scores of _poilus_--on their _permissions_ similar--squatting on the ground and doing--what do you suppose? Picking violets. Yep--picking violets. I says to myself then, I says, 'These frogs sure are queer guys.' But now, Spink, I understand. I don't want to do anything more strenuous myself than picking violets, unless it's selling baby blankets, or holding yarn for old ladies. Perhaps by an enormous effort I might summon the energy to run a tea-room."