But it seemed that something was lacking to make self-entertainment worth while. Exactly what this was he did not know. There was effort now where none ever had been. And that effort was the initiative of a mind seeking, for the first time, its complement, vaguely, blindly irritated by its own incompleteness.
He went to see his aunt, but she wasn’t very glad to see him.
The reason he called on her was to talk about Eris, but Mrs. Grandcourt bluntly inquired what his interest might be in an actress, and suggested that he mind his business and try to foregather with women of his own caste.
“Isn’t she?” he asked rather rashly.
But she, old, wise, disillusioned, and with a sort of weary comprehension of men, made it plain that the granddaughter of Jeanne d’Espremont concerned herself alone.
As he was taking his leave:
“I can imagine,” she remarked, “nothing as contemptible as any philandering with this child by any man of my race.”
He went out with that in his ear.
It bored him all day. Finally it interested him. Because that is exactly what would have happened in one of his own stories——