“Why,” laughed Quincy, “you make me think I was paying a visit to myself, in extension.”
“Well, what else gripped you? Was it the architecture?”
They laughed together. And then, in the silence, the boy pondered.
“You’re right,” he said at last. “I felt it also,—that I had been looking into myself. Now, I can do more than feel it—thanks to you; I can express it.” He paused.
“The devil! Then all these brutalities and contrasts and flauntings are truth? And they’re in me, also—at least, what makes them be!”
“Don’t you also belong to the world?”
Quincy looked sharply at his friend. This question moved him. He thought of his life, so far. He thought of the havoc which even this little glimpse of the world had played with him. He grew sombre and his eyes lost their liquid glow of relaxation.
“Something’s wrong,” he said solemnly. “If I belong to the world, there’s that within me objects to it. It cries out, objecting. It felt the beauty, that day. And, as you say, that meant that it recognized a fellowship, a harmony. But it hurt, Garsted,—it hurt like being crushed!”
Garsted laughed—alone. He could go only a certain way with Quincy. This seemed jejune sensitiveness.
From the moment of that laughter, the boy discovered that there were things and states about which it was unwise to talk, even in the rare circumstance of being able to.