"I don't know. Paris has lost its glamour. One can't help feeling that somewhere one will find one's level. I've thought of Austria. The Philistines at home have said so much against our former enemies that one feels they must harbour rare virtues, as does everything the Philistines decry! Do you know Vienna?"
"I spent two years there—before the war."
"Tell me about it."
"I daren't, for I was young. Consequently I look back at my sojourn through a treacherously romantic haze. You might do worse than go there, if only for the sake of storing up impressions upon which you, too, can look back sentimentally in days to come. For half the joy of life consists in passionate recollection."
Paul paused a moment, then said:
"Do let me send you to Vienna. I can supply you with enough to keep you going for a year or two."
Instinctively the youth drew back. "It's very kind of you, but of course it's out of the question."
Paul was impatient. "I gave you credit for more consistency," he said.
"What do you mean??"
"My offer in no way reaches your pride—or, if it does, then your pride is an impertinent intruder upon your idealism, You profess to be an 'all or nothing' idealist, yet you hold back because of a scruple bred in a sphere of society where ideals are ignored, like the drains."
The young man was impressed, and visibly tempted. "But I can make no return," he temporized.
"I'm not offering gifts to you, you fool," retorted Paul. "I'm subventioning your soul. Your soul is only a facet of my own, of the universal soul. If you starve, the cause of enlightenment is retarded by so much—that is my misfortune as well as yours"
