“You’re right, there were a lot of others, but I don’t think I loved any of them.”
“No one at all?”
He didn’t answer. He stood up and walked across the room. Then he came back and stood looking down at her.
“I don’t know what to say. We were very close once and then I came back here and made myself forget everything about Europe, everything that had happened to me there.
“It hasn’t been easy to do. The only way I could get by, though, was to do what I’m doing: become a broker. I can’t be the way I was; I can’t afford it. Of course I can still have all the girls I want and I can have a good time. I suppose I can fall in love sometime ... again, but I have to be a conventional person and I don’t mind.
“Tonight those people were examples of freedom....”
She interrupted him. “Not really freedom, self-indulgence perhaps.”
“Whatever it is, they call it being free. I don’t want that. I couldn’t have that kind anyway because I’m not talented; I don’t do anything well and I know it.”
“You can be a free person, though.”
“How?”