“The various sorts of love and its aftermath that you write about are enough to scare any man off that stuff,” remarked Coltfoot.
“Those are the sorts I’ve seen.... Or the cut and dried hypocrisy of my own kind and kindred.... I’ve seen darned few cases of satisfactory and enduring love.... Darned few, Mike.”
“Then there are a few?”
“Sure.”
“Why not write about one such incident?”
After a silence Annan lifted his eyes and gave him a haggard look.
“I’m afraid of Christmas-card stuff, I guess.... Mike, I’ve always been afraid of it. I’ve had a morbid fear of weakness.... And do you know I believe that was the real weakness? I am weak!”
“Barry, you’ve merely had things come to you too easily. You’ve had your own way too much. You’re persuasive; you get it. You’ve been, perhaps, a little self-complacent, a bit smug, a trifle cocksure.... All strength is in danger of such phases. But weakness never is. Weakness must assert itself or silently acquiesce in its own visible inferiority. For the bragger is the weakling, not he who does not need to assert himself.
“And always there lies a danger in the reticence of strength that, unawares, complacency and self-satisfaction may taint it, and strength go stale.”
After a silence: “My stuff has been pretty narrow, I guess,” muttered Annan.