Carl listened with a feeling of impotent anger. Yes, they were probably right in their commands and he would be a scoundrel if he refused to obey them and rescue them from their poverty; but--well, he preferred to be a scoundrel. “Beyond a doubt I’m a lazy, ungrateful wretch, and all that I care for is to put words together--that seems to relieve me somehow--but say, how about sticking to what I am?” he asked himself. “I know perfectly well that I’ll never change, and if I make a liar out of the rest of my life that won’t make me any the less guilty. Besides, it’s funny, but I don’t know whether I want to change. There’s something satisfactory about being a scoundrel--it lets you do the things that you want to do; while being good, as far as I can see, is just pretending that you like to do the things that you don’t want to do. Well, I’m not going to stand for that! I’ve got to choose between hurting my parents and hurting myself and they are going to be the victims. This will be mighty selfish, I know, but I guess I’m a naturally selfish person. Anyway, I don’t feel much love for them and I don’t see that it will help them if I try to hide my feelings. They would find out sooner or later what an inhuman person I am and they might as well find out now.” Carl answered the verbose commands and advice of his parents with a mechanical “yes” now and then--a small shield to protect the inner unfolding of his thoughts--and walked into his bedroom, where he rested his dull broodings upon a pillow. The lives of some men represent a scale of gradually increasing compromises with, or victories against, the forces surrounding them, while other men crowd their decision into one early moment and walk swiftly down an unchanging road. The boy with Carl died upon the bed in his room and the fumbling, stiffly vindictive beginning of a man rose and walked into the street, with an evil smile petrifying the softness of his face. In this emotional birth he became to himself a huge black criminal staggering beneath the weight of unreleased plots, and he derived an angry joy from this condition, reveling in the first guilty importance that had invaded his meekly repressed life.