“Well, then, don’t make the mule-face, Robin,” she said. “Listen to what I am saying. All that organization is the brain behind the mere mechanism. When you doubt about taking this appointment, it is the same as if you were not sure that you would not sooner be a puff of steam that came from an engine, than part of the intelligence of the man who drives it.”
For a moment the “mule-face” vanished, and Robin laughed with boyish appreciation.
“Oh, mother, you are clever!” he said. “That’s just like you.”
“My dear, I’m not clever in the least: it’s the plainest common sense.”
He shook his head.
“No, it was clever,” he said. “I am bound to admit the excellence of your simile. But you can’t convince people by similes.”
“You can if the simile is just,” she said, “and if people are logical.”
He got up, the creased forehead outlining itself again, and pulled at his sword strap and belt which were still not quite familiar, as if he was wearing some new sort of cuff or collar.
“Well, the simile is just, and I am logical,” he said. “If I choose to think, I see your logic. But as well as thinking, I feel. I don’t say that I choose to feel, but I have to feel. I wonder if you understand that.”
Suddenly she became aware of the immense change between the Robin of two months ago and the Robin who stood before her now. He was still the same Robin, too; the change, immense though it was, was not due to any new characteristic that had come to him: it was but the emergence and revelation of what she had known was there all along. The secure prosperity of his active, unreflective boyhood had but veiled it over as with thin ice: that bright, dazzling covering had caused a glitter on the surface, and you had not been able actually to see below it. But now that had melted and she could see into the deep water that lay so tranquilly beneath. Yet it was not that he had become a man: he was just as young as ever....