"Well, I've gone forward," he said. "I've made myself in the Street. You don't know what you ask when you want me to give it up. Nobody can understand it unless he's been in the game. I can't think what it is—it isn't vanity, because all that we write is unsigned; it's sheer love of the work that drives us on."
"But you hate it, too."
"We hate it as fiercely as we love it..." he said, simply. "One day we say to ourselves, 'We will give it up.' That's what I say to you, now. I'm going to give it up, one day."
"That you have also promised before," she said, in a gentle voice. "Let us talk it over between ourselves. Why shouldn't you leave now?"
He was cornered: he stood at bay, facing her beauty, but behind it and above it he saw all the struggles and endeavour and splendid triumph that awaited him in the restless years to come, when each day would be a battle-field, and any might bring him defeat or conquest. He saw the world opening before him, and far-off cities close at hand; he saw himself wandering through the years, touching the lives of men; a privileged person, always behind the scenes of life, with a hint of power perhaps.... And, in exchange, she offered him peace and rest, both of which corroded the soul eager for war; peace and rest and love, that would be so beautiful until the years made them familiar and wearisome, until he would be forced to go out again into the thick of the battle ... and by that time his armour would be rusty, and the years of peace would have blunted his sword.
"Elizabeth," he said slowly, "I can't live in a room, now. I can't always look out of the window on the same scene. I must keep moving. Each day must bring me a fresh scene, a fresh experience. I have grown so used to change and movement that a week without it makes life dull and unbearable. I'm not fit for anything else but the work I do. I'm born to do that and nothing else. Everything in life now I see from the point of view of 'copy.'" He laughed, but there was a sob in his laughter at his shameful confession. "Why, even at the funeral, as I stood over the grave, and watched them lower the coffin, I felt that I could write a splendid column about it, and instead of feeling the solemnity of it all, I found that I was watching the white surplices against the green trees, and looking at the faces of the people, and painting a picture in my mind...."
He paused. Her eyes were downcast, and her fingers played absently with the loops of the chain that hung from her neck.
"It's a habit," he went on. "It's grown on me, so that I see life and its emotions as a series of things to be written about. Why shouldn't I have thought as I did at the funeral? I have been taught to do it, when I go to the funerals of great men that I have to report. I'm a journalist ... a reporter. I've seen men eat their hearts out in a year, after they've left the Street light-heartedly. The reaction comes suddenly. Things are happening all around them, and they're out of it. And they creep back, and try to get a job again. That's what Kenneth himself will do one day.... I don't want to be one of those, Elizabeth. I want to go through with it, right through to the failure at the end of all, and when the failure comes, I'll build up again."
She spread out her hands helplessly. "I see..." she said, "I see...." That was all for a moment, and then, again: "If you were doing something worthy, I could understand; if you were producing art, I could understand, too ... but this"—a copy of The Day was on the table, and she held it in her hand—"this is unworthy. This is all you produce with your infinite labour."
"It's not unworthy ... we have our ideals."