"Make her see! What chance have I against God Almighty? You don't understand the basis of the whole business. 'Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.' When He stops loving He stops chastening. So it's up to the believers to get all the chastening there is."
"Don't, Jean. There must be more in it than that." Jean dabbed at her eyes and crossing to the sink filled the kettle for tea.
"Well, maybe there is. But when you live with it you're too near to see it. It's either that, all summer long, waiting for something to turn up out of the blue, or going away to teach. Sometimes I don't know which is worse."
"Now, Jean, we've hashed that over and settled it a million times. It's ridiculous. After all you are rather like mummy, you know. There are millions of things to do when you've got ordinary intelligence, but just because you loathe teaching you've picked it out as the one thing that'll come your way. How about that translation? How do you know it won't lead to something else?"
"Because I want it to so terribly hard, Patsy. I know, Pat, I suppose I do rant, but I guess I've got what Dr. Harper calls 'The Imagination for Pain.' I do want things so hard that I just can't imagine getting them."
"Doesn't say much for your imagination, no matter what Harper calls it. But it isn't that. It's just conceit, not another thing. You're so proud of that analytic brain of yours that you work it on everything. The minute you get a glimpse of some happiness you drag it into that mental laboratory and tear off its flesh, and you never stop until you've busted the poor old skeleton to bits. Why can't you let things go about with their clothes on?"
"I do."
"No, you don't. And when you do get it stripped it isn't any more of a truth than it was with its clothes on."
Pat's color deepened and she looked away in genuine embarrassment, for in the emotional reticence of their friendship they were oddly like two men. At long intervals Pat's love and admiration forced her to try and make Jean see things simply and clearly as she saw them herself.
"And it's such a lonely job, sitting there by yourself prying the barnacles off every old oyster that's been struggling to hold its clothes on ever since the world began."