"What a logic—excuse me, skip it...."
"Oh, you really meant it when you said you weren't going to fight with me any more?"
"I'm going to try not to. Now, remembering that I don't consider your premise valid, just suppose that when we visit some planet some day, you get your mind burned out and I don't—solely because I had something I could have given you and wouldn't. What then?"
"Oh. I thought that was what you ... but suppose I can't...."
"We won't suppose anything of the kind. But that wasn't all that was on your mind. Nor most."
"How true. Those Primes. The women. Honestly, Clee, I never saw—never imagined—such a bunch of exhibitionistic, obstreperous, obnoxious, swell-headed, hussies in my whole life. And every day it was borne in on me more and more that I was—am—exactly like the rest of them."
Garlock was wise enough to say nothing, and Belle went on: "I've been talking a good game of licking myself, but this time I'm going to do it."
She jumped up and doubled her fists. "If you can do it, I can," she declared. "Like the ancient ballad—'Anything you can do I can do better.'" She tried to be jaunty, but the jauntiness did not ring quite true.
"That's an unfortunate quotation, I'm afraid. The trouble is, I haven't."
"Huh? Don't be an idiot, Clee. You certainly have—what else do you suppose put me so far down into the dumps?"