“Nothing but work!” he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes two darknesses, with needle-points of light. “No, it is nothing but this, serving a machine, or enjoying the motion of a machine—motion, that is all. You have never worked for hunger, or you would know what god governs us.”
Gudrun quivered and flushed. For some reason she was almost in tears.
“No, I have not worked for hunger,” she replied, “but I have worked!”
“Travaillé—lavorato?” he asked. “E che lavoro—che lavoro? Quel travail est-ce que vous avez fait?”
He broke into a mixture of Italian and French, instinctively using a foreign language when he spoke to her.
“You have never worked as the world works,” he said to her, with sarcasm.
“Yes,” she said. “I have. And I do—I work now for my daily bread.”
He paused, looked at her steadily, then dropped the subject entirely. She seemed to him to be trifling.
“But have you ever worked as the world works?” Ursula asked him.
He looked at her untrustful.