"How you mean, Max?"
"Aw, you're all either in the blues or nagging. Why ain't you sports enough to take the slice of life you get handed you? None of you ain't healthy enough, anyways, I tell you, indoors, eating and sleeping and mewling over poodle-dogs all the time. I'm damn sick of it all. Damn sick, if you want to know it."
"But, Max, what's put this new stuff into your head all of a sudden? You never used to care if—"
"And you got to quit writing me them long-winded letters, Mae, about what's come over me. Sometimes a fellow just comes to his senses, that's all."
"Max!"
"And you got to quit butting in my business hours on the telephone. I don't want to get ugly, but you got to cut it out. Cut it out, Mae, is what I said!"
He quaffed his wine.
"Max dear, if you'll only tell me what's hurting you I'll find a way to make good. I—I can learn lawn-tennis, if that's what you want. I can take off ten pounds in—"
"Aw, I don't want nothing. Nothing, I tell you!"
"If I only knew, Max, what's itching you. This way there's days when I just feel like I can't go on living if you don't tell me what's got you. I just feel like I can't go on living this way, Max."