dinners for instance."

"I don't dare. I can't work at work and also work at play. I must work at
one or the other all the time. I can do nothing without a definite object.
I can't be just a little interested in anything or anybody. With me it is
no interest at all or else absorption until interest is exhausted."

"Then if you were interested in a woman, let us say, you'd be absorbed
until you found out all there was, and then you'd--take to your heels."

"But she might always be new. She might interest me more and more. Anyhow I
fancy that she would weary of me long before I wearied of her. I think
women usually weary first. Men are very monotonous. We are as vain as
women, if not vainer, without their capacity for concealing it. And vanity
makes one think he does not need to exert himself to please."

"But why do people usually say that it is the men that are difficult to
hold?"

"Because the men hold the women, not through the kind of interest we are
talking about, but through another kind--quite different. Women are so lazy
and so dependent--dependent upon men for homes, for money, for escort
even."

Miss Trevor was flushing, as if the fire were too hot--at least she moved a
little farther away from it. "Your ideal woman would be a shop-girl, I
should say from what you've told me."

"Perhaps--in the abstract. I really do think that if I were going to marry,
I should look about for a working-girl, a girl that supported herself. How