“To do? You mean, how do I propose to employ myself? I have nothing whatever in view, beyond enjoying life.”
“At your age?”
“So young? Or so old? Which?”
“So young, of course. You deliberately intend to waste your life?”
“To enjoy it, I said. I am not prompted to any business or profession; that’s all over for me; I have learnt all I care to of the active world.”
“But what do you understand by enjoyment?” asked Miss Barfoot, with knitted brows.
“Isn’t the spectacle of existence quite enough to occupy one through a lifetime? If a man merely travelled, could he possibly exhaust all the beauties and magnificences that are offered to him in every country? For ten years and more I worked as hard as any man; I shall never regret it, for it has given me a feeling of liberty and opportunity such as I should not have known if I had always lived at my ease. It taught me a great deal, too; supplemented my so-called education as nothing else could have done. But to work for ever is to lose half of life. I can’t understand those people who reconcile themselves to quitting the world without having seen a millionth part of it.”
“I am quite reconciled to that. An infinite picture gallery isn’t my idea of enjoyment.”
“Nor mine. But an infinite series of modes of living. A ceaseless exercise of all one’s faculties of pleasure. That sounds shameless to you? I can’t understand why it should. Why is the man who toils more meritorious than he who enjoys? What is the sanction for this judgment?”
“Social usefulness, Everard.”