“Well, then you were right, if you think that way about it. But then—but then, you can scarcely blame the fraternities.”
“And who blamed ’em?” cried Quincy.
Of course, it was Adelaide who blamed them. She was about to say so. But evidently, from his outburst, her next step must be to concur in his refusal to.
“Of course,” she smiled, “I don’t blame them. Who cares?”
There was a pause. Adelaide got up, came to his side:
“Well, I love you, Quincy dear.”
Audiences laugh when clumsy acrobats fall over tables. So it is fair to assume that the gods laughed at Adelaide.
The conversation died once more. And when it was renewed with a last painful effort, it was far less personal. At once, now, Quincy threw himself in it. He careered freely, happily. And in this abandon, his remarks seemed brutal to his sister. It was her turn to be hurt in this pitiful ricochet.
Garsted had told him he had a mistress. Quincy gloried in this. He knew all of Garsted’s arguments against Puritan morality. Here was another case of sex gratified in purely psychic channels. The boy launched upon a eulogy of his friend’s free life.
“Isn’t he going to marry her?” asked Adelaide. She was gripping herself. She did not mind this open talk with Quincy. Her bringing-up forbade it. And the discrepancy between the tingling pleasure that she felt and the horror that she should have felt, made her insecure. So she gripped herself and gave Quincy rein. Adelaide rode horseback—now that they were rich. A vision flashed across her of her latest mount, galloping in Central Park. She had always felt a similar strange discord between the prim Park and her joy in galloping. But the vision went, without a challenge.