Robert Johnson is a writer from Maryland who was born in 1905. As a boy, he filled his lonely days by reading poetry and novels. He dreamed of escaping his gilded but dull childhood. As a student at Johns Hopkins University, Robert was enticed by the dreamlike experience of scholarship. As he realized the rigid reality of higher education, this feeling quickly faded along with his dreams of becoming a writer. He graduated with a law degree in 1926, and his parents provided him with some money to move to Paris. Robert eagerly chased the artistic possibilities and free intellectualism that the city boasted. He visited the famed salon of Gertrude Stein, an American writer who hosted the brightest creative minds of the Western world in her home during the 1920s. Stein’s influence led Robert to believe that art alone could elevate people beyond their mere lives. He visited her several times, but he was a wallflower who paled in comparison to the vibrant personalities and unmistakable talents of artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Henri Matisse. Robert did have minor success as a poet, but he never felt like he gained enough acclaim from his peers to stick with writing. After a year, his parents’ money ran out. Robert reluctantly returned to the United States, became a book editor, and got married. After his wife’s death, he finally has a chance to reflect on his time with Stein. In 1967, he returns to Paris to visit the graves of Stein and her life partner, Alice B. Toklas. Their graves are neglected compared to those of the other revered artists buried in the cemetery. Robert remembers that Stein surrounded herself with talented people, but she was never very talented herself. She treated her life like art, and that made it so. Without her community, her life seems insignificant. He realizes that art is not important because the artist loves it but because other people love it. People are not important because they love themselves but because other people love them.