'Have you realised that you are throwing over a career that may be very brilliant? You should get an under-secretaryship in the next government.'
'That would only mean licking the boots of a few more men whom I despise.'
'It's a very dangerous experiment that you're making.'
Dick looked straight into Alec MacKenzie's eyes.
'And is it you who counsel me not to make it on that account?' he said, smiling. 'Surely experiments are only amusing if they're dangerous.'
'And to what is it precisely that you mean to devote your time?' asked Mrs. Crowley.
'I should like to make idleness a fine art,' he laughed. 'People, now-a-days, turn up their noses at the dilettante. Well, I mean to be a dilettante. I want to devote myself to the graces of life. I'm forty, and for all I know I haven't so very many years before me: in the time that remains, I want to become acquainted with the world and all the graceful, charming things it contains.'
Alec, fallen into deep thought, stared into the fire. Presently he took a long breath, rose from his chair, and drew himself to his full height.
'I suppose it's a life like another, and there is no one to say which is better and which is worse. But, for my part, I would rather go on till I dropped. There are ten thousand things I want to do. If I had ten lives I couldn't get through a tithe of what, to my mind, so urgently needs doing.'
'And what do you suppose will be the end of it?' asked Dick.