“I’m not sure I don’t prefer dulness to excitement,” said Tom. “Wait till you’ve had a fright, and then see how you appreciate uneventfulness.”
“Ah, but dulness is not a synonym for content,” said Maud, speaking from her new experiences. “It is a great mistake to suppose that.”
Tom flicked off the end of his cigarette ash. For the last few weeks he had deliberately stifled certain thoughts, but with Maud there was no need to stifle them.
“I am not sure,” he said. “Of course one aims at content--one aims at nothing else. But one aims at it, I think, because one knows it is unattainable. There is no such thing as content for people who are alive--you know what I mean by alive. I think we have talked about it before. For human beings to be content is to be limited.”
“Yes, and to be human is to be limited. I am talking like a maiden aunt, I know.”
“You have the distinction of having invented the least applicable definition possible of yourself. What’s the opposite to maiden aunt? Married niece, I suppose. There is your label.”
“No; but you unite qualities which are rarely united. You are experienced and you are fresh. How do you do it?”
“I might much more reasonably ask you that.”
“Not at all. At present I feel like a _blasé_ baby.”
Tom suddenly became overwhelmingly conscious of all he had stifled so long. His anxieties over petty money matters, the sordidness of the life in the little flat in Bloomsbury--all these were trifles; but there were other things which were not trifles. He and May loved each other--that he believed; but apart from their love to each other their passions lay as far sundered as the two poles. Each was invisible and incomprehensible to the other.
“It is this,” he said. “I have felt and feel a passion for something which I shall, I am afraid, have to abandon. I am telling you things I have told to no one, hardly to myself. But, as you know, art is a passion to me. There is one art, so I think, and I am trying to realize it. But I have to face the probability that it will not be appreciated--already I call it a probability--and if so, I shall have to abandon it because I have other ties, and the need for bread and butter rightly outweighs all else. Not that I am less enthusiastic; but one can neither live nor triumph by enthusiasm. There are claims which outweigh all enthusiasms or artistic convictions.”