He walked back to the Sims House. He realized that to a civilized man the fact that Pickerbaugh advocated any reform would be sufficient reason for ignoring it.
When he had gone thus far, Martin pulled himself up, cursed himself for what he esteemed his old sin of superiority to decent normal people.... Failure. Disloyalty. In medical school, in private practise, in his bullying health administration. Now again?
He urged, “This pep and heartiness stuff of Pickerbaugh’s is exactly the thing to get across to the majority of people the scientific discoveries of the Max Gottliebs. What do I care how much Pickerbaugh gases before conventions of Sunday School superintendents and other morons, as long as he lets me alone and lets me do my work in the lab and dairy inspection?”
He pumped up enthusiasm and came quite cheerfully and confidently into the shabby, high-ceilinged hotel bedroom where Leora sat in a rocker by the window.
“Well?” she said.
“It’s fine—gave me fine welcome. And they want us to come to dinner, to-morrow evening.”
“What’s he like?”
“Oh, he’s awfully optimistic—he puts things over—he— Oh, Leora, am I going to be a sour, cranky, unpopular, rotten failure again?”
His head was buried in her lap and he clung to her affection, the one reality in a world of chattering ghosts.