“Is that reason one? Look at Abe and Florence—how quiet she is, and he’s such a lively fellow, and yet they couldn’t be happier.”
“But they belong to the same world—their code, their creed—and we don’t. Quiet and lively is only on top. You think things wrong that I think right, and the other way about.”
“There is no such thing as thinking things right or wrong, Deb. They are right or wrong.”
“Well—there you are!” eagerly. Perhaps by patient wriggling she could twist her way out of this earth-tunnel, instead of by one volcanic eruption. “I’d be frightened to believe that. It’s too simple....”
“Well, what do you believe right which I believe wrong?” She could not tabulate. And remained silent.
“There, you see!” conclusively.
“If you married me,” he persisted, “I’d give you every single thing you wanted”—with a mental reservation that his promise naturally did not include the things that were unfit for her.
She twisted in another direction. “You don’t like my friends.”
“No. They’re not real, Deb. And you won’t like them either when you learn that they’re not real. Nothing unwholesome can be real. I don’t care how clever they are—I’ve no respect for cleverness or art——”
“Not the ‘Faerie Queene’?” innocently.