“That’s what it gets down to, after all, isn’t it? Because Cecily doesn’t care for a certain kind of thing I am to give it up absolutely; without any assurance that I’ll get anywhere if I do. And what happens to me? You say I can’t play up to Cecily anyway. Am I to sit at home and twirl my thumbs and be sighed over?”
“You’re becoming absurd.”
“I’m not absurd. I’m working hard. You know I’m working hard and I’ve got to have a little fun. I’m going to be old in five years. I’ve only a few years of even the end of youth left. Isn’t the absurd thing that Cecily and I can’t enjoy things together? But I catch myself wondering all the time if she isn’t disapproving, if she doesn’t think I’m coarse. I get so tired of playing up to her instead of being easy and natural.”
“And the coarse streak in you aches for a bit of ribaldry.”
Dick smiled sheepishly. “Perhaps.”
The twilight had fallen now. Matthew, pacing by the window again, looked down on the streets, dark and soft through a sudden fall of snow. He turned and laid his hand on Dick’s shoulder.
“Well, anyway, life’s a queer mess,” he said.
Dick looked at him curiously, somewhat abashed at this personal, tangled conversation.
“We’re a pair of nuts,” he said, “and I’ll be late to dinner, and there’s a new cook.”
They took their hats.