“That’s hardly fair,” replied René. “I’m out and about all day. Every day I clean and oil the car. Often I spend hours on it.”
“You do nothing that could not be done by a less intelligent man than yourself. You may do it more conscientiously, but at its best it is not good enough for your best.”
“But surely that applies to every trade and profession?”
“Does it? I’m certainly not going to generalize. What’s true of you is probably true of thousands of men. I’m not interested in them as I am in you.”
“It is even more true of the work I did before,” said René. “I do feel now that I am doing something. There is money earned at the end of every day, really earned by being useful. But I don’t know that I think about it much. It has become a habit, like everything else.”
“All right, say it has become a habit. Say that a certain amount of your energy is drawn off in habit, what of the rest? That’s what I’m driving at. What of the rest?”
“I read, amuse myself, and Ann——”
“And you are going on forever, working out of habit, reading and amusing yourself, and a woman who——”
“I’ll trouble you not to say anything against Ann.”