had been poor, and had had my leisure, and had worked at things I cared about, with a set, let us say, of young artists, all working too at things which they cared about, it would have been different—­but I hadn’t the energy left to make friends, or the time to find any congenial people.  I can’t describe what a nightmare it all was—­so that when I hear you speaking as if money didn’t really matter, I simply feel that you don’t know what a tragedy it can be, or what your own income saves you from.  You and I have the Epicurean temperament, my boy; it’s no good pretending we haven’t—­things appeal to our mind and senses in a way they don’t appeal to everyone.  So I don’t think that people ought to talk lightly about money, unless they have known poverty and not suffered under it.  I used to ask myself in those days if it was possible to suffer more, when every avenue reaching away out of my life to the things I loved and cared for seemed to be closed to me by an impassable barrier.”

“But one can practise oneself in doing without things?” I said.

“With about as much success,” said Father Payne, “as you can practise doing without food.”

“But isn’t it partly that people are unduly reticent about money?” I said.  “If people could only say frankly what they can and what they can’t afford, it would simplify things very much.”

“I don’t know,” said Father Payne.  “Money is one of those curious things—­uninteresting if you have enough, tragic if you haven’t.  I don’t think talking about money is vulgar—­I think it is simply dull:  to discuss poverty is like discussing a disease—­to discuss wealth is like talking about food or wine.  The poverty that simply humiliates and pinches can’t be joked about—­it’s far too serious for that!  Of course, there are men who don’t really feel the call of life.  Look at our friend Kaye!  If Kaye had to live in London lodgings, he wouldn’t mind a bit, if he could get to the Museum Reading-Room—­he only wants books and his own work—­he doesn’t want company or music or art or talk or friends.  He is wholly indifferent to nasty food or squalor.  Poverty is not a real evil to him.  If he had money he wouldn’t know how to spend it.  I read a book the other day about a priest who lived a very devoted life in the slums—­he had two rooms in a clergy-house—­and there was a chapter in praise of the way in which he endured his poverty.  But it was all wrong!  What that man really enjoyed was preaching and ceremonial and company—­he had a real love of human beings.  Well, that man’s life was crammed with joy—­he got exactly what he wanted all day long.  It wasn’t a self-sacrificing life—­it would have been to you and me—­but he no doubt woke day after day, with a prospect of having his whole time taken up with things he thoroughly enjoyed.”

“But what about the people,” I said, “who really enjoy just the sense of power which money gives them, without using it—­or the people whose only purpose in using it is the pleasure of being known to have it?”