“—for the first time in two years—if I belong in Greenwich Village.”
“I've asked myself the same question, Sue.”
This remark perturbed her a little; as if it had not before occurred to her that other eyes were reading her. Then she rushed on—“Take Waters Coryell over there”—she indicated the pasty-faced one—“I used to think he was wonderful. But he's all words, Like the rest of us. He always carries that calm assumption of being above ordinary human limitations. He talks comradeship and the perfect freedom. But I've had a glimpse into his methods—Abbie Esterzell, you know—”
The Worm nodded.
“—and it isn't a pretty story. I've watched the women, too—the free lovers. Henry, they're tragic. When they get just a little older.”
He nodded again. “But we were talking about you, Sue. You're not all words.”
“Yes I am. All talk, theories, abstractions. It gets you, down here. You do it, like all the others. It's a sort of mental taint. Yet it has been every thing to me. I've believed it, heart and soul. It has been my religion.”
“I'm not much on generalizing, Sue,” observed the Worm, “but sometimes I have thought that there's a lot of bunk in this freedom theory—'self-realization,' 'the complete life,' so on. I notice that most of the men and women I really admire aren't worried about their liberty, Sometimes I've thought that there's a limit to our human capacity for freedom just as there's a limit to our capacity for food and drink and other pleasant things—sort of a natural boundary. The people that try to pass that boundary seem to detach themselves in some vital way from actual life. They get unreal—act queer—are queer. They reach a point where their pose is all they've got. As you say, it's a taint. It's a noble thing, all right, to light and bleed and die for freedom for others. But it seems to work out unhappily when people, men or women, insist too strongly on freedom for their individual selves.”
But Sue apparently was not listening. Her cheeks—they were flushed—rested on her small fists.
“Henry,” she said, “it's a pretty serious thing to lose your religion.”