"You think it possible that one may have ten souls?"
"I think it probable that one soul may have twenty outlooks, and all of them vile, when he has soaked in sufficient gin. But how an unhealthy mind can produce healthy stuff—that's beyond me. Your prose is healthy, and what's more, it's fine. It ranks with"—He stopped abruptly, amazed and confounded by the glitter in Ricossia's eye.
"You—you don't think it better than my poetry? You can't!"
"I think—in a sense—it is better!" Amherst spoke slowly and Ricossia leaned forward to catch his words with an avidity which seemed disproportioned to the matter in hand. "In another sense it's not so good, of course. The poems are unhealthy, feverish, abnormal—but, in their way, they're efforts of genius. The stories are simply very unusually clever prose—healthy, witty, and clean. Personally I prefer them."
"You—you miserable Philistine!"
The boy leaned back as though relieved and his scarlet lips parted in a smile of startling sweetness. The eyes had lost their wild gleam now and were simply wells of dusky kindness and fellowship; the eyes of an intelligent, friendly brute with something added. Gerald noted the change with unflagging interest; as a study the boy never palled.
"You think I'm a bad lot, don't you?"
"I think you're as bad as the worst. But a chap like you isn't to be judged by ordinary standards."
"Yet," pursued Ricossia, slowly, "you allow that I can write clean stuff. Perhaps in spite of it all, underneath it all—my soul is clean."
"I hope so; but I don't believe it for a moment. No, I can't account for it that way."