"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."