Tom was silent. He loved his sister’s trenchancy too well not to admit her points. His doubts brewed energy. He got up and paced the floor to slough it off. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he repeated. He stopped.
“Cornelia, I may be queer.... I guess I am a man of action. What else is there to do with him?”
She looked at her brother soberly. She knew he had touched a deep chord.
He went on: “My muscles seem to be very near my nerves. My muscles must move, as soon as my nerves feel. Do you understand? If I am glad, I dance. If I am hurt, even now, I am liable to cry. You know that. Don’t you remember, Cornelia, at the Farm, when I had made a particularly perfect mud-pie, how I brought it into the house and placed it intact on your table—even though it meant a mess and a licking? It was mine: I had to bring it in to you. Well: David can teach me dreams and truth: but I’ve made a mud-pie of the world. He must share it....”
He had his days of offensive against Cornelia.
“You want to make a child of him. You want to keep him a child. Motherer!”
“He is a child.”
“Aren’t you glad?”
“Well, if I am? Mayn’t one be happy with something that one finds?”
“What of David? He can’t have you for a mother all his life. Some day he will be compelled to sally out.”