'Do you know what an "ideal" is?'
'Yes—well—no!' She hesitated. 'Perhaps I could not define it exactly.'
'A man's ideal is what he wants, and nothing else in the world.'
Margaret was not sure whether she should resent the speech a little, or let it pass. For an instant they looked at each other in silence. Then she made up her mind to laugh.
'Do you know that you are going ahead at a frightful pace?' she asked.
'Why should I waste time? My time is my life. It's all I have. Any fool can make money when he has wasted it and really wants more, but no power in heaven or earth can give me back an hour thrown away, an hour of what might have been.'
'I'm sure you must have learnt that in an English Sunday school! It's a highly moral and practical sentiment! But what becomes of the imagination?'
'Oh, that's the other side,' Logotheti answered, laughing. 'Never do to-day what you can put off till to-morrow, for if you do you'll lose all the pleasure of anticipating it! And the anticipation is much more delightful than the reality, so you must never realise your dream, if you mean to be happy—and all that sort of thing! But if reality knocks at my door while I am asleep and dreaming, and if I don't wake up to let it in, it may never take the trouble to knock again, you know, and I shall be left dreaming. I don't know about the Sunday school maxim being moral in all cases, but it's certainly very practical. I wish you would follow it and come with me to the East—you and Mrs. Rushmore.'
'You mean that if I don't, you'll never ask me again, I suppose?'
'No. That was not what I meant.' He looked steadily into her eyes till she turned her head away. 'What I meant was that you might be induced to give up the idea of the stage.'