“Marian—I say, Marian,” called Mrs. Sidney. “Has Teddy come down?”
Miss Trevor coloured slightly as she answered: “No, he comes a week Wednesday. He’s still hunting.”
“Hunting,” Howard repeated when Mrs. Sidney was again busy with the others. “Now there is a kind of work that never bothers a man’s brains or sets him to worrying. I wish I knew how to amuse myself in some such way.”
“You should go about more.”
“Go—where?”
“To see people.”
“But I do see a great many people. I’m always seeing them—all day long.”
“Yes—but that is in a serious way. I mean go where you will be amused—to dinners for instance.”
“I don’t dare. I can’t work at work and also work at play. I must work at one or the other all the time. I can do nothing without a definite object. I can’t be just a little interested in anything or anybody. With me it is no interest at all or else absorption until interest is exhausted.”
“Then if you were interested in a woman, let us say, you’d be absorbed until you found out all there was, and then you’d—take to your heels.”