“I’ll clear out,” she said, and, pausing as she passed through the door, “I could use some sort of a counter....”
“You bet, miss.”
“There,” said Maude to Kendall, presently.
“I see,” he said, soberly. “I’m seeing lots of things.”
“That weren’t visible in Detroit,” she added for him. Then, after a pause, “And so am I.... There’s something in the air—here—in Paris—wherever one goes in this country. It gets you.... I could do things. Yes, I could.... You have a feeling that nothing you do as an individual counts—nothing matters. Everything we’ve ever been used to seems so far away and insignificant. Don’t you feel that way?”
“Yes.”
“As if you could be very good or very, very bad—and it wouldn’t make a cent’s worth of difference to anybody?”
“Yes.”
“Other girls are feeling it. I think they are all feeling it. There are plenty of signs.... C’est la guerre. I suppose that’s it.... No, it can’t be explained by a phrase of the streets; it’s deeper than that.... With one half of the world trying to slaughter the other half.... Every little while I have a feeling that right and wrong have grown to be too big to apply to individuals—they’re for nations. Does that express what I mean? And then I’ve thought more than once that this is the end of the world—the end of the old world and the starting-place of a new one.... Temporarily we’re without a set of rules because the old ones won’t do any more, and we’ve got to build up an altogether new code.”
“I’ve felt something like that, but I didn’t have a philosopher for a father, so I didn’t know just what I was feeling or how to say it.”