In the short story, Reginald on the Academy, Saki writes:
“To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.”
What does this mean?
(EDIT: Some additional context is provided by the preceding 5 lines:
“I suffered in that way just now,” said Reginald plaintively, “from a woman whose word I had to take that she had met me last summer in Brittany.”
“I hope you were not too brutal?”
“I merely told her with engaging simplicity that the art of life was the avoidance of the unattainable.”
“Did she try and work it out on the back of her catalogue?”
“Not there and then. She murmured something about being ‘so clever.’ Fancy coming to the Academy to be clever!”
)