“Do you think they are the same thing?”
“Effectiveness is the only test of cleverness, isn’t it?”
“If the people one affects are clever, one must be clever to affect them, I suppose.”
“But if they are stupid?” smiled Maurice, “and such heaps of people are, aren’t they?”
“Yet it is clever to take that into account and to make what one wants out of their stupidity.”
“Ah, exactly; that is what Geoffrey does,” said Maurice. It was what she had imagined of him. “And such cleverness is, to you, a very ugly thing,” he added.
“Oh; I don’t know.” Felicia flushed a little, realizing that they were going rather far since it was of his friend they were talking. “It would depend, wouldn’t it, on what he wanted to get out of their stupidity?”
“He wants to get power.”
“Well, there again, for what end?”
“Isn’t power an end in itself?”