“Then I’ll get tight by myself.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will. I swore to do something special this evening. I feel like it.”
“In that case, I get out at the next station.” He was laughing, but quite determined. Stephen had grown too dictatorial of late. The Ansells spoilt him. “It’s bad enough having you there at all. Having you there drunk is impossible. I’d sooner not visit my aunt than think, when I sat with her, that you’re down in the village teaching her labourers to be as beastly as yourself. Go if you will. But not with me.”
“Why shouldn’t I have a good time while I’m young, if I don’t harm any one?” said Stephen defiantly.
“Need we discuss self.”
“Oh, I can stop myself any minute I choose. I just say ‘I won’t’ to you or any other fool, and I don’t.”
Rickie knew that the boast was true. He continued, “There is also a thing called Morality. You may learn in the Bible, and also from the Greeks, that your body is a temple.”
“So you said in your longest letter.”
“Probably I wrote like a prig, for the reason that I have never been tempted in this way; but surely it is wrong that your body should escape you.”