"All right, say it has become a habit. Say that a certain amount of your energy is drawn off in habit, what of the rest? That's what I'm driving at. What of the rest?" "I read, amuse myself, and Ann----" "And you are going on forever, working out of habit, reading and amusing yourself, and a woman who----" "I'll trouble you not to say anything against Ann." "I'm not saying anything against her. She has a perfect right to be herself, but if being herself interferes with me, I have a perfect right to fight for what I want." "What do you want?" "Your friendship." "You have it," replied René, in the tone of one squashing an argument. "Yes," said Kilner, "comfortably. You try to make room for me in your little circle of comfort, and, worse still, to use me as a comfort. I can't stand that. She knows it. That's why she keeps you away from me." René protested: "She doesn't." "She does. You watch her eyes when she comes in and finds me here." René looked up at him uneasily. Kilner pounced on that: "You are uneasy already. I don't want to make trouble between you two. You can make quite enough for yourselves, but I mean to dig out of you what I need. I mean to try anyhow until I am satisfied that what I need is not there." There was a challenge in this, and René had the surprise of finding himself meeting it. Indeed it was bracing to feel the painter's vigorous mind searching his own and throwing aside all that he disliked or condemned. "Ever since," said René, "ever since our first meeting under the archway, I have felt that there was something in you that I desired to understand, something that, without my understanding it, has made more difference than any other thing in my life." Kilner leaned forward. "Now," he said, "now we know where we are. Most men pretend with me that they keep the emotional side of their nature for women. They don't give it them, God knows what they do with it. Most men also confuse their emotions with their imaginations. I think that is why they spend their lives in the uncomfortable search after comfort." "And women?" asked René.