Cornelia laughed musically up and down the scale.
"Just fancy what he said: 'A friendship which doesn't grow spontaneously out of joint partnership in work is built on quicksands.'"
"He's a fanatic," said Harry Kelly, breaking his silence and one of Cornelia's saucers in the violence of his feelings.
"Nonsense, Hercules," she said, in a tone that poured contempt on his vehemence. "He has simply let all the soft places grow in his head and all the hard places in his heart."
Janet went into the next room to hang up her hat and coat. Claude followed her.
"I think Robert's ideas are getting more and more unbalanced," he said, dictatorially. "If I were you, Janet, I'd finish up my work with him at once."
"It takes two to break a bargain, Claude."
"Well, you might at least keep your relations with him on a strictly business footing—and as little of that as possible."
He ignored her slight mutinous gesture.
"He's a difficult man to get along with," he went on. "Look how even Hutchins Burley had to fire him. And as if his dismissal from the Chronicle were not bad enough, he joins these Guildsmen people who are trying to wreck the very basis of modern society. That has just about dished him, as far as the Outlaws are concerned. They all cut him now."