"I suppose I ought to have known," replied Kurt, chuckling at Kilner's annoyance, "but you see I was brought up in a German household. There was a fellow called Schiller they used to talk about, and they named a club after him where they used to eat and drink."
"And what," asked Kilner, "made you take to flying?"
"Oh, I don't know. I always loved engines and speed. And after all, you know, it is the only thing to do."
"Kilner thinks painting is the only thing to do," interjected René.
"I meant for me," answered Kurt. "That may be all right for him. I hate using my brains. Things get muddled at once if I do. I love using my body so that every muscle is called into play, and I loathe illness. It's torture to me to be just a little unwell. I get moments out of my work that make everything else seem nothing at all, just something to laugh at and be merry over."
"Something like that is my life," said Kilner. "A few moments, only they are not enough in themselves. I have to follow them up in spirit and express them."
"And I," said René, "am always hunting about for those moments in life and not finding them."
"No, but I'm absolutely certain they are there. I never knew what I was after until I met Kilner. I'm not certain that I know now. But I've escaped social hypnotism so far, and from what you tell me I seem to be less in danger of hypnotism by my own will than either of you."
"I deny that," cried Kilner angrily. "You are denying the supremacy of the artist. Just because you have dodged a few of the conventional social obligations, you think----"
"I'm not denying anything of the kind. I grant you the artist is supreme and his vision the most potent force in human thought, but the artist also must be a man and must live, or there's an end of his vision. He must be prepared if necessary to live in the hypnotic circle, and he must be strong enough to assert his will in it."
"That's stupid," said Kilner. "As if any of us could escape, as if that weren't precisely what the artist does. Your friend here is the lucky one. He is doing a new thing, exercising a new faculty which is imperfectly developed, so that it is not yet prostituted and abused, as art, science, and love have been. He is still a wonder, even to fools. I who aspire to art, you who aspire to love, are to the world nothing but idiots who have not the _nous_ to help themselves to the plunder and comfort ready to their hands. But you and I are braver than he, for we seek greater things. He is content with physical health and adventure. That is something. It is a higher aim than money and money's worth. But you and I are definitely pledged to accept only the happiness we know to be true, and the sorrow to which our wills can consent."