that the lowest, emptiest form of human entertainment. They're dull;
they're expensive; they keep you from doing intelligent things,
like studying; they keep you from doing simple, healthy things, like
sleeping and exercising; they make you artificial; they make you civil
to people you despise--they make women, at least, for we must have
partners--"

"But why do you go, then?"

She was silent, and they looked straight and long at each other. Then
she said, gravely:

"The answer's very humiliating. I go because I haven't anything else
to do."

He did not reassure her. "Yes, that's bad," he said, after a second.
"But of course you could not expect to have anything else to do when
all your time is taken up like that. 'When the half gods go,' you
know, 'the gods arrive.'"

The quotation was not new to Crystal; in fact, she had quoted it to
Eddie not very long before, apropos of another girl to whom he had
shown a mild attention, but it seemed to her as if she took in for the
first time its real meaning. Whether it was the dawn, exhaustion, a
stimulating personality, love, or mere accident, the words now came
to her with all the beauty and truth of a religious conviction. They
seemed to shake her and make her over. She felt as if she could never
be sufficiently grateful to the person who had thus made all life
fresh and new to her.