He frowned. “Wisps of old things hang around futilely and bother me a trifle—like soft fog around a ship, but I’ll get rid of them,” he said confidently.
“So as to be free?”
“Yes.”
She reflected for a moment. “Why do you want to be free?” she asked timidly. “What will you do with freedom, Stacey?”
“Do with it? Nothing! It’s an end in itself. Isn’t it aim enough to want to get rid of association with the kind of thing I’ve been chronicling?”
She shook her head. “It might be. It isn’t your aim, Stacey. And anyway one can’t be free. Oh, Stacey, forgive an old woman who is fond of you,—but you—you’ve come back a different person than you went away, and indeed you must, to live, follow that old, old advice: ‘Know Thyself’!”
He stared at her sullenly.
“I know you’re determined not to, but you must!” she cried.
“Haven’t I,” he said coldly, “been regaling you with reams about myself?”
She shook her head again. “You haven’t even scratched the surface. It’s late, my dear boy,” she added. “Please take me home.”