“It isn’t important,” said Stanny, groping for expression; “all this bunk about manliness . . . if you have mind . . . if you have character. . . .”
“Yes, but have I?” demanded Wilfred.
“Don’t worry about it . . . ! You’re too self-conscious.”
“Sure! But how can I help that? You’re like my Aunts. When I was little they were always telling me I was too thin-skinned. You might as well blame a man for being blind.”
“Don’t think about yourself so much.”
“Everything comes back to yourself. Yourself is the only measure you have for other things. . . . I’ve read hundreds of books, but I’ve never had anybody to tell me things. I don’t even know how to pronounce the words I have read, because I never heard anybody say them. . . . Only my grandfather, and he died when I was eleven. He was a man! I read his books. They are stored in a packing-room next to my room. Darwin, Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall were his favorites. I can’t make much of Huxley or Herbert Spencer, but Darwin! Oh, Gee! Darwin is my man!”
“Why Darwin in particular?”
“I dunno. Sort of mental hero. Always willing to face a new fact though it destroyed all his work up to that moment. . . . My grandfather wasn’t a one-sided man. He read the poets too; also Emerson and Carlyle. I’m crazy about Carlyle. . . . . It was fine to discover that your nature and mine were alike, Stanny!”
“You hop about so!” grumbled Stanny. “The hell they are!”
“I know. . . . It is you and the others, who have cured me, made me healthy in my mind. I used to think I was going crazy. . . . But especially you. There’s something between you and me . . . like this, we can talk about things. . . .”