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"What work am I going to do? What work am I going to do?" He
repeated it.
It is the only question for the aristocrat. What amusement? That
for a footman on holiday. That for a silly child, for any creature
that is kept or led or driven. That perhaps for a tired invalid,
for a toiler worked to a rag. But able-bodied amusement! The arms
of Mrs. Skelmersdale were no worse than the solemn aimlessness of
hunting, and an evening of dalliance not an atom more reprehensible
than an evening of chatter. It was the waste of him that made the
sin. His life in London had been of a piece together. It was well
that his intrigue had set a light on it, put a point to it, given
him this saving crisis of the nerves. That, indeed, is the chief
superiority of idle love-making over other more prevalent forms of
idleness and self-indulgence; it does at least bear its proper
label. It is reprehensible. It brings your careless honour to the
challenge of concealment and shabby evasions and lies. . . .
But in this pellucid air things took their proper proportions again.


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