'Why do I write?' Robert said. 'Because man doesn't live by bread alone and because I believe in the need for that added element. I write in order to capture all the things action ignores - the truths of the moment, the individual, the immediate. Up to now, I thought that that task went hand in hand with the revolution. But no; it hinders it. At the moment all literature that aspires to give man something besides bread is exploited to prove that he can very well do without bread.'

'You've always avoided that misunderstanding,' I said.

'But things have changed,' Robert said. 'You see, today the revolution is in the hands of the Communists and of them alone. There is no longer any place for the values we used to defend. Maybe one day we'll find them again; let us hope so. But if we stubbornly insist on maintaining them now, we serve the cause of the counter-revolution.'