“But surely,” said Olivia, “all this dancing and these late hours must be very bad for your heart.”
He smiled sadly. “What does it matter? I’m no use to anybody, and nobody cares whether I’m dead or alive.”
Olivia protested warmly. “The world is crying out for young men of three-and-twenty. You could be useful in a million ways.”
“Not a crock like me.”
“You could go into an office.”
“Yes. In at one door and out of another. Hopeless.”
He drew from a slim gold case a Turkish cigarette—Olivia, minutely hospitable, had put a box of a hundred in his room—and tapped it thoughtfully.
“After all, which is better—to carry on with life like a worm—which anyhow perisheth, as the Bible tells us—or to go out like a butterfly, with a bit of a swagger?”
“But you mustn’t talk of going out,” cried Olivia. “It’s indecent.”
Bobby lighted his cigarette. “Who would care?”