The Razor's Edge

by W. Somerset Maugham

“I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You’re intoxicated by the boundless space. You feel such a sense of exhilaration that you wouldn’t exchange it for all the power and glory in the world. I was reading Descartes the other day. The ease, the grace, the lucidity. Gosh!” “But Larry,” she interrupted him desperately, “don’t you see you’re asking something of me that I’m not fitted for, that I’m not interested in and don’t want to be interested in? How often have I got to repeat to you that I’m just an ordinary, normal girl. I’m twenty, in ten years I shall be old, I want to have a good time while I have the chance. Oh, Larry, I do love you so terribly. All this is trifling. It’s not going to lead you anywhere. For your own sake I beseech you to give it up. Be a man, Larry, and do a man’s work. You’re just wasting the precious years that others are doing so much with. Larry, if you love me you won’t give me up for a dream. You’ve had your fling. Come back with us to America.”