"Of what?"

"Oh, of doing anything rather than expire of boredom. She and Rex had

been married a year and were living at home. Rex and Mr. Carter helped

excavate down in the business district, as the working class wouldn't

lift a finger as long as the Government was feeding them."

"There you are! Their ideal is complete leisure, and that of our delicate

products of the highest civilization--compulsory jobs! What does progress

mean but the leisure to enjoy the arts and all the finer fruits of

progress? What else do we men really work for?"

"Progress has gone too far and defeated its own ends. Every healthy human

being should be forced to work six hours a day.

"That would leave eight for sleep and ten for enjoyment of the arts and

luxuries. Then we really should enjoy them, and if we couldn't have them

unless we did our six hours' stint, ennui and the dissipations that it

breeds would be unknown.

"I can tell you it is demoralizing, disintegrating, to wake up morning

after morning--about ten o'clock!--and know that you have nothing worth

while to do for another day--for all the days!--that you have no place in

the world except as an ornament! Women of limited incomes and a family of

growing children have enough, to do, of course--too much--they never can

feel superfluous and demoralized--except by envy--but as for us! Why, I

can tell you, it is a marvel we don't all go straight to the devil."

They were alone with the coffee, and she was pounding the table with her

little fist. Her cheeks were deeply flushed and her black somber eyes

were opening and closing rapidly, as if alternately magnetized by some

ugly vision and sweeping it aside.

Price watched her with deep interest and deeper anxiety. "A good many

women go to the devil," he said. "But you are not that sort."

"Oh, I don't know. I never could get up enough interest in another man to

solve the problem in the usual way--but there are other

resources--I--well--"

"What?" Price sat up very straight.

"Oh, dance ourselves into tuberculosis," she said lightly, and dropping

her eyelashes. "And tuberculosis of the mind, certainly. On the whole, I

think I prefer physical to spiritual death....

"However--I found out one thing to-day. The dancing is to be out of

doors. There will be an immense arbor or something of the sort erected

on the lawn above the sunken garden. My gown is a dream and I shall wear

the ruby."




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