"I was crazy about her. But I had to go to college and I couldn't afford to see her often. Couldn't afford to take her to the proms. A Christmas vacation came around and we threw a party at the house of a friend whose folks had gone south. We all got tight. I missed her when I was dancing--and started looking. I found her upstairs--in a bedroom--with a guy in my class. After that--" "--you knew they were just like trolley cars." "When I was working on the _New Yorker_--I fell again. A gal from Holyoke--" "Horse manure to Holyoke." "Paul. What are we supposed to think--to do--when we spend all the energy and time and dough to make a brilliant adult out of a promising kid? By 'we'--I mean at least a hundred men and women. The kid turns out to be super-good. Everybody chips in to make sure he has every possible opportunity. He is tops in his class. He gets an inside hot spot on the most important project in his nation. Every single person who ever knew him--loves him--and is button-popping proud of him. But one day he has his feelings hurt badly--and there's not one thing we can do for him. We try. But it's no dice. So he climbs out of a window and slams about a billion dollars' worth of brains and the time and energy, and hope of other people, to smithereens, on the curb. We bury what's left of him. And then we sit around asking each other what the use is. Our best wasn't good enough for him or for us. We keep asking ourselves what the hell he did expect of life--and of us--that he didn't get." Paul at least listened--which was a clue: he'd listen to a piece about himself. But he said coldly, "Your values are pretty sleazy, Phil. Only a day or two ago, you were telling me that we physicists had sinned. That we deserved to be punished. That all we'd done was evil. Now--because you're in a corner--physics is suddenly the most important thing in the nation. May I repeat--horse manure!" "Sins of omission," I said. "You guys think of yourselves as honest--and you are, in one way. About science, you don't cheat or lie, ever. It's the solitary triumph of our age. And look at the results. Progress in objectivity accelerates by a factor of hundreds--thousands--in a couple of centuries. I'm for that. But that--alone--isn't enough. You birds look at your objective integrity as if it were all there is to virtue. It's not. Listen, Paulo. There are two functions of virtue: one is to find new truths; the other is to dispel old lies; the whole man practices both, equally." "Grant that--but don't we educate people as fast as we can?"