Free The Eternal Wonder by Pearl S. Buck Page B

through his imagination. Once his problems are solved, his mind is free to create. And the more he creates, the more free he is.”
    A sudden light broke across Rannie’s mind. He sought out the professor after the class, lingering until every other student had left the classroom.
    “I’d like to talk with you,” he told the professor.
    “I’ve been waiting for you to say that,” the professor said.
    “I SHAN’T BE HOME THISevening,” he told his mother. “I have an appointment with Dr. Sharpe. He’s expecting me. I may be late—it depends.”
    “Depends on what?” his mother asked.
    She had a quiet, penetrative way of asking questions. He looked at her, thinking not of her but of her question.
    “I don’t know yet,” he said. “I don’t know how the talk will go. If I don’t learn anything from it, I’ll be home early. If I do, I’ll be late.”
    He ate his evening meal in the silence of abstraction. They had continued to eat their meals in the kitchen. While his father lived this meal had been the one formal occasion of the day, always set in the dining room. Breakfast was a brief pause at the kitchen table, luncheon a random sandwich, but his father liked the grace of dining at night with a change of garments, a table set with silver and china and a bowl of flowers. The dining room had never seemed too large for the three of them, but alone with his mother it was too large, too empty.
    “I don’t know Dr. Sharpe very well,” his mother was saying.
    “Neither do I, really,” he replied. “It’s good to have someone young with fresh ideas. I’ve known the other professors all my life, it seems. They’re all right, of course, but—”
    His mind took over again and he fell silent. His mother prodded him.
    “But what?”
    “But what?” he repeated. “Only that I like having something new. Especially if it’s something I am already thinking about.”
    “And that is? …”
    He glanced at his mother’s questioning face and smiled, half shyly, “I don’t know—creativity, I suppose!”
    Half an hour later he was in Donald Sharpe’s small living room. They were alone, for Sharpe was a bachelor and kept his own house, except for a cleaning woman once a week. It was a charming room, decorated with taste and design. Two French paintings, in the style of the Old Masters, hung on facing walls, and on a third, opposite the chimney piece, was a Japanese scroll. An easy chair covered in old gold velvet was on each side of the fireplace. The autumn was late autumn, the evenings were chill, and a wood fire scented the room.
    He felt at ease and somehow comforted in this room as he had not been comforted since his father died. The gold velvet chair fitted his lanky body, and he liked its luxurious softness. Donald Sharpe sat opposite him, and on the small table beside him was a tall-stemmed wineglass.
    “You’re still quite young, Rannie,” he had said, “but this is such a gentle drink that I don’t think it will count.”
    So saying, he had poured a glass of wine for his visitor and Rannie had tasted it and set it down on the table beside his chair.
    “You don’t like it?” Sharpe asked.
    “Not really,” he replied honestly.
    “It’s an acquired taste, I suppose,” Sharpe said.
    That was how the evening began. Now it had progressed to solid talk, interspersed with long moments of working silence.
    He was a handsome man in a dark way, almost too handsome, not tall, and with a feminine lightness of bone structure. His eyes were his most notable feature, large and dark under clearly marked brows, their gaze penetrative, bold, or stealthy by turns. He continued to speak.
    “Of course imagination is the beginning of creation. Without imagination there can be no creation. But I’m not sure that explains art. Perhaps art is the crystallization of emotion. One has to feel an overflow. I write poetry, for example. But days and months go by—sometimes a year or even longer—when I write