"Debts?" she said, raising her eyebrows.
The self-possession of this child of eighteen was really amazing. Not a trace in her manner of timidity or tremor. In spite of her flight from him he could not flatter himself that he had made any impression on her nerves. Whereas her beauty and her provocative way were beginning to tell deeply on his own.
"Well, I daresay!" His laugh was as frank as her question. "I'm generally in straits."
"Why don't you do some work, and earn money?" she asked him, frowning.
"Frankly—because I dislike work."
"Then why did you write a play?"
"Because it amused me. But if it had been acted and made money, and I had had to write another, that would have been work; and I should probably have loathed it."
"That I don't believe," she said, shaking her head. "One can always do what succeeds. It's like pouring petrol into the motor."
"So you think I'm only idle because I'm a failure?" he asked her, his tone betraying a certain irritation.
"I wonder why you are idle—and why you are a failure?" she said, turning upon him a pair of considering eyes.