lady impersonating Winter, and making fair practice with her detachable
icicles, "it was Kit or no one. Just consider Malim's position, which
was that of thousands of other men of his type. They are the cleverest
men of their schools; they are the intellectual stars of their
Varsities. I was at Oxford with Malim. He was a sort of tin god.
Double-first and all that. Just like all the rest of them. They get
what is looked upon as a splendid appointment under Government. They
come to London, hire comfortable chambers or a flat, go off to their
office in the morning, leave it in the evening, and are given a salary
which increases by regular gradations from an initial two hundred a
year. Say that a man begins this kind of work at twenty-four. What are
his matrimonial prospects? His office work occupies his entire
attention (the idea that Government clerks don't work is a fiction
preserved merely for the writers of burlesque) from the moment he wakes
in the morning until dinner. His leisure extends, roughly speaking,
from eight-thirty until twelve. The man whom I am discussing, and of
whom Malim is a type, is, as I have already proved, intellectual. He
has, therefore, ambitions. The more intellectual he is the more he
loathes the stupid routine of his daily task. Thus his leisure is his
most valuable possession. There are books he wants to read--those
which he liked in the days previous to his slavery--and new ones which
he sees published every day. There are plays he wants to see performed.
And there are subjects on which he would like to write--would give his
left hand to write, if the loss of that limb wouldn't disqualify him
for his post. Where is his social chance? It surely exists only in the
utter abandonment of his personal projects. And to go out when one is
tied to the clock is a poor sort of game. But suppose he _does_
seek the society of what friends he can muster in London. Is he made
much of, fussed over? Not a bit of it. Brainless subalterns, ridiculous
midshipmen, have, in the eyes of the girl whom he has come to see, a