Oil! by Upton Sinclair

Bunny was back at Southern Pacific. It was the line of least resistance; a nice, clean occupation, honorific and easy on the nerves. One who was good-looking and wealthy, and knew how to charm the professors, could get by with almost no work at all, and have abundant time to read Bolshevik propaganda, and watch strikes happen; also to sport about town with a moving picture star, to drive and dine and dance with her, and escort her to weekend parties of the Hollywood elite.

He might even have found time to visit the studio and watch her at work on her new picture; but she would not let him do this. She was too much in love with him, she could not concentrate with him looking on. Moreover, she said, her work was horrid, all pictures were horrid; Bunny wouldn't like what she was doing. It was just a way she earned her living, and she had to do what other people told her; it was without any relation to life, and Bunny, who was serious and educated, would think it childish, or worse. She liked him to be serious, he was a dear and all that, and one of the few men who really could tell her something about the world; he must go on being like that, and not pay any attention to her pictures.