THE next night Ann went out alone. She insisted that it must be alone, though she gave him her most happy smile to reassure him. He sat reading a copy of _Extracts from Browning_ which he had bought for twopence from old Lunt. The book was against his temper, but he found a certain pleasure in making himself read from page to page. At nine o'clock Kilner came in. He was gaunt and haggard, and his collar was dirty. He nodded, produced a pipe, and sank, as he lit it, into the wicker chair opposite René's. "You're comfortable in here," he said. "Snug. I suppose once you're settled in here of a night you don't give a blast what goes on in the world outside. One doesn't when one has got what one wants." René laid his book down. "Have you got what you want?" "I? No. I never---- I was going to say I never have. I don't suppose I ever shall. That makes me hate all the people who settle down in comfort and pretend there is nothing more to want. And as that is nearly everybody, you can imagine the hating part of me is kept pretty busy. That again is a nuisance, because it gets between me and what I want, and makes me waste energy in analyzing myself, my enemies, patrons (when I have any), friends. My relations gave me up as a bad job long ago. They made all sorts of sacrifices because they were led to believe that my talent would in the end make me more comfortable than they had ever been. When they found that I preferred discomfort and penury and starvation to what seemed to them the simple expedient of painting what I was expected to paint (they can't understand anybody wanting to paint anything else), then they shrank away from me. They could make no more sacrifices. People don't sacrifice for something they don't see, and their eyes close just when mine begin to open. We both console ourselves with hatred. I hate what they worship: the capacity for comfort. They hate my incapacity. It is very stupid. I would give almost anything to be able to live without hatred. It seems barely possible, though you come as near to it as any man I ever knew. The pity of it is that you arrive at it by doing and wanting nothing." "That's hardly fair," replied René. "I'm out and about all day. Every day I clean and oil the car. Often I spend hours on it." "You do nothing that could not be done by a less intelligent man than yourself. You may do it more conscientiously, but at its best it is not good enough for your best." "But surely that applies to every trade and profession?" "Does it? I'm certainly not going to generalize. What's true of you is probably true of thousands of men. I'm not interested in them as I am in you." "It is even more true of the work I did before," said René. "I do feel now that I am doing something. There is money earned at the end of every day, really earned by being useful. But I don't know that I think about it much. It has become a habit, like everything else."