“Tom, you won’t be angry with me, will you,” she said at length, “because I am going to say something which I have had on my mind for a long time, and which I think I had better say. It is this. Do you think it is right for you to see much of him, to know him, to be at all intimate with him? Oh, Tom, he is not a good man! I don’t know about his life, and you probably do; but I am sure of that. He has no better aim in life than the success of his own wits. He has a bad effect on you. He makes you think lightly of things which are more important than anything else. Oh, I’ve got such a lot to say to you!”
May sat up and played rather nervously with her rings.
“And when you stick in your work, Tom,” she went on, “do you think it is well to stimulate yourself in the sort of way you mention? You know you aim at the best, and all that is good comes from one quarter. Do you ever go there for help?”
Tom got up and walked up and down the room.
“It is like this,” he said: “I believe in God, and I believe in good, but I also believe in things like laws of nature, and if God created all things, He created them. He has given me a brain which works in obedience to certain laws, and nothing in the world can alter them. We know a little about the brain, at least by experience we find that certain things stimulate it; it works best when it is keen and eager, and I use those things to make it keen and eager which I have found by experience do so. No, when I stick in my work, I don’t pray.”
“But that is the essence of good work,” said May; “it is that which makes it good--the fact that it is done in a spirit of dedication.”
“But, do you then think that a good man, in so far as he is good and dedicates his work to God, necessarily produces good work?” asked Tom.
“I mean that a man who has a gift in any line, uses his gift best and produces more beautiful things if he dedicates it. Why, Tom, look at the difference between your things and Mr. Manvers’. I think he is not a good man, and I think his things are not good for that reason.”
“It all depends on what you mean by good and bad work,” he said. “I think the object of a beautiful thing is only to be beautiful, and I think his things are bad because they are ugly--at least, they seem to me ugly.”