He stopped. Tom was silent. No: this was no reason. David could know. David needed no proof. He had to forgive these stupid relationships of Tom.
“How should you know?” asked Tom. “Ask yourself, David.”
Groping again. There sat his friend. He felt him like a flame in the dark. Why was he, David, crouched there, gathering strength to strike him? Why could he not accept him?... Past pains, past miseries. He had not wanted better than to accept him. What had cast him off? Surely not his desire? Tom it was, who made him not accept him. He was not fighting. He was holding himself safe. By God! holding himself clean. Reasons! Reasons against Tom!
“What help do you give me in my troubles?” he said, low in his seat: half to himself: placing his words before him very near, as if to look at them, rather than give them to Tom—lest he wish to recall them. “I have my worries. I have to keep them to myself. Is that what I should feel with my friend? I have had problems with—women. If I mention them to you, you sneer or laugh or turn hard. And difficulties with my relatives—worries downtown....”
“I do not coddle you, David.”
How much he laid upon these words, and how these words were like a shaft—running slow from Tom to him!... Did David wish ease and flattery from friendship? Did David wish help that might hurt, or soothing that would hinder? David was childish and selfish. No! Tom could not take so seriously his petty affairs with women. Oh, yes, he knew about them—every one: or his untidy problems with his uncle’s family or with his Chief downtown. No! he was not David’s wet-nurse. If he wanted a friend—one who took him ever upon the most real level, who by dint of treating him as mature and strong might help him to achieve maturity and strength....
David again gazed at the light casemented from the night-packed room. There was something: yes, there were reasons. These were not the true ones. Let him then say aloud: “These are not the true reasons, Tom.” What would happen? Tom’s quiet voice—he was quiet now: why was his voice not always so quiet—would ask: “And the true reasons, David?” His answer! Let him now bring forth his answer. Why was that silly nightmare protruding in his mind? Tom was a flame in the room. It burned him. Let him come to hate it, to avow his hatred!
“It seems, Tom, that we are so very far apart.” Oh, but were they not near? To whom was David, these past years, growing and nearing? “I do not know how to express my dreams, my ideals, Tom. I am not ashamed of that. I have time to learn to express them. But they are real. I fed as if to you, they are not real. You have no love for them ... no faith....” He was silent. He went on: “When a woman is going to have a child, she has not seen it, she does not know how it looks or what it will be named. But it is real to her, and she loves it.”
“Can’t you see, David, that this child in you,—this dream-life at your heart—is what I love more than all in the world?”
“You are perpetually hurting me: sneering at me: stabbing my efforts to understand with your logical proofs that understanding and ideals and truth are nonsense!”