"This is the most significant thing of all," Isabel said finally. "The girl has set us talking of her as if she were a personage, instead of a girl from a Wisconsin valley—"
"That's true," Mason admitted. "She's of the countless unknown hundreds of the brightest minds from the country, streaming into the city side by side with the most vicious and licentious loafers of the towns. It leaves the country dull, but moral. The end is not yet. In the end the dull and moral people survey the ruined walls of the bright and vicious."
"And the dull and the moral are prolific," Sanborn put in.
"Precisely, and they can eat and sleep, which gives them long life and vast stomachs."
Roberts sprang up, "I propose to escape while I can. Mason is wound up for all night." There was a little bustle of parting, and eventually Sanborn and Mason walked off together.
"It's no time to go to sleep. Come to my room and smoke a pipe," suggested Mason. "I'm in a mood to talk if you're in a mood to listen."
Sanborn was a modest fellow, who admired his friend. "I am always ready to listen to you," he said.
"Probably that is your amiable weakness," Mason dryly responded.