'I think I could spend money well. I'd give the people I liked a good time.'
'You'd waste their time, and yours, you mean. Not that I object to the spending of money—if it's in the right way.'
'I think I could find the right way, if I had it.' She was speaking with quite the seriousness she had disowned. 'I hate injustice, and I hate ugliness. I think I could make things nicer if I had money.'
Franklin now was silent for some time, considering her narrowly, and since she had now looked down from the branches and back at him, their eyes met in a long encounter. 'Yes,' he said at length, 'you'd be all right—if only you weren't so wrong. If only you had a purpose—a purpose directed towards the just and the beautiful; if only instead of waiting for means to turn up, you'd created means yourself; if only you'd kept yourself disciplined and steady of aim by some sort of hard work, you'd be all right.'
Helen, extended in her chair, an embodiment of lovely aimlessness, kept her eyes fixed on him. 'But what work can I do?' she asked. She was well aware that Mr. Kane could have no practical suggestions for her case, yet she wanted to show him that she recognised it as a case, she wanted to show him that she was grateful, and she was curious besides to hear what he would suggest. 'What am I fit for? I couldn't earn a penny if I tried. I was never taught anything.'
But Mr. Kane was ready for her, as he had been ready for Jim Betts. 'It's not a question of earning that I mean,' he said, 'though it's a mighty good thing to measure yourself up against the world and find out just what your cash value is, but I'm not talking about that; it's the question of getting your faculties into some sort of working order that I'm up against. Why don't you study something systematically, something you can grind at? Biology, if you like, or political economy, or charity organisation. Begin at once. Master it.'
'Would Dante do, for a beginning?' Helen inquired, smiling rather wanly. 'I brought him down, with an Italian dictionary. Shall I master Dante?'
'I should feel more comfortable about you if it was political economy,' said Franklin, now smiling back. 'But begin with Dante, by all means. Personally I found his point of view depressing, but then I read him in a translation and never got even as far as the Purgatory. Be sure you get as far as the Paradise, Miss Buchanan, and with your dictionary.'