"Perhaps," George suggested, "the ranks are saying something of the sort about us. Besides, I don't see why you call me reactionary."
"Would you have minded it a while back?" Lambert asked.
"Just the same," George answered, "I'd like to get their point of view."
What would Squibs say to that from him? Squibs, undoubtedly, would be pleased. After Lambert had gone he sat for a long time thinking. He was glad Lambert had come, for the other had suggested that in endeavouring to capture such a point of view, in pleasing Squibs, he might at last find a real interest, and one of use to somebody besides himself. If the men on the heights didn't get at it pretty soon, a different kind of climber would appear, with black hands, inflamed eyes, and a mind stripped, by passion, of all logic. Gladly he found it possible to bring to this new task the energy with which he had attacked the narrower puzzles of the university and Wall Street.
Sylvia had called him the most selfish person she had ever met, and, as he tried to strip from the facts of the world's disease the perpetual, clinging propaganda, he applied her charge to his soul. From the first he had been infected, yet his selfishness had been neither inefficient nor dangerous. This increasing pestilence was. Lambert guessed what he was at, and George jeered at him for his war madness, but Lambert had found again an absorbing interest. Because of his missing leg it was rather pitiful to watch his enthusiasm for a reawakened activity.
"You've got to see Harvard swallow your old Tiger, George," he said one Friday. "After all, why not? You don't need to come out to the Alstons, although I'm not sure there would be any harm in that. Talk's about done, I fancy."
George flushed.
"Do you know I'd love to spill you again, Lambert? I'd like to bring you down so hard the seismographs would make a record."
"Too bad we can't try to kill each other," Lambert said, regretfully. "Why not watch younger brutes?"
"I've wanted it for days," George acknowledged. "I'll wire Squibs."