“Have I more right to memories, as a man?”
“Why not ... to these?” she said, softly. “They do not make your years ridiculous ... as mine do mine.”
“Are you so much afraid ... of ridicule?”
“Yes,” she said, frankly. “I am as unwilling to be ashamed in my own eyes ... as in those of the world.”
“My youth,” she said, gently.
He was silent. Then he said:
“I interrupted myself just now. I meant to tell you that, after my games as a child, it was always my obsession ... to be something. To be somebody. To be a man. To be a man among men. That was when I was a boy of sixteen or seventeen. Afterwards, at the university, I was amazed at the childishness of Hans and Van Vreeswijck and the others. They never thought; I was always thinking.... I worked hard, I wanted to know everything. When I knew a good deal, I said to myself, ‘Why go on learning all this that others have thought out? Think things out for yourself!’ ... Then I had a feeling of utter helplessness.... But I’m boring you.”
“No,” she said, impatiently.
“I felt utterly helpless.... Then I said to myself, ‘If you can’t think things out, do something. Be somebody. Be a man. Work!’ ... Then I read Marx, Fourier, Saint-Simon: do you know them?”