“But you do work.”
“At what?”
“Oh, in the army and all that.”
“My orderly does the work.”
“You are so provoking. There is all sorts of work you must do yourself.”
“Well, why do you remind me of anything so painful, when I am doing my best to forget it? You are not an altruist or a socialist, are you?”
“I’m not anything that some one else has invented. I believe in work, because idleness horrifies me; some primal instinct in me wars against it. The civilization that permits idleness in the rich and in those with just enough to relieve them from work, with none of the responsibilities and diversions of great fortunes, is no civilization at all, to my mind. Of course, I believe in progress, but I believe in hanging on to the conditions which first made progress possible; and when I saw those carriage-loads of ridiculous women and finery in Paris I wanted to go home and till the soil and restore the balance. How good that coffee smells!”
He poured her out a steaming cup. He had raided the kitchen for cream and bread, and he carried sugar with him. No orderly had ever made better coffee.
“What women?” he asked, smiling into her still angry eyes. They were seated at a little table close to the railing and the vines hung down in her hair. Her theories might be crude and somewhat vague, but at least she thought for herself.
She described the morning in the Rue de Rivoli and the procession of American butterflies.