“My dear Quint,” he said, “you are become like a sounding cave—which gives forth from its mouth only a lugubrious counterpart of what is spoken to it.”
“Talk sense, Simon.”
Quincy was at his desk, doing a page of Cicero’s immortal tract On Friendship. His coat was on the floor near a chair where he had meant to throw it. He wore a plain white shirt with a soft collar. His chest and shoulders ridged fluently. He looked strong and at ease. Garsted sprawled, head up, mouth open, on the window seat. One leg lay high over the other knee. He was smoking a pipe.
“All right,” he said; “—what the devil’s wrong?”
“Nothing, old man.”
“Now you’ve delivered yourself of the conventional denial, dispense with the conventional ten pages of hesitation and come to the avowal.”
“I am not a character in a novel.” Quincy was incensed.
“You don’t talk enough to be a character in a play.”
“I’ll say anything you want. Only you’ve got to tell me what it is you want.” Quincy went ahead gingerly, for he felt his guilt.
Garsted rolled over to face him, on his cushioned window-seat.