Both are ended for Querida;--let men exalt him above all, or bury him and his work out of sight--what does he care about it now?
He has had all that life held for him, and what another life may promise him no man can know.

All reward for labour is here, Rita; and the reward lasts only while the pleasure in labour lasts.

Creative work--even if well done--loses its savour when it is finished.

Happiness in it ends with the final touch.

It is like a dead thing to him who created it; men's praise or blame makes little impression; and the aftertaste of both is either bitter or flat and lasts but a moment." "Are you a little morbid, Kelly ?" "Am I ?" "It seems to me so." "And you, Rita ?" She shook her pretty head in silence.
After a while Gladys jumped up into her lap, and she lay back in her arm-chair smoothing the creature's fur, and gazing absently into space.
"Kelly," she said, "how many, many years ago it seems when you came up to Delaware County to see us." "It seems very long ago to me, too." She lifted her blue eyes: "May I speak plainly?
I have known you a long while.