“I am not trying to corrupt him:--I like him, Cornelia: I want him where I can be with him. So long as he stays in his ivory-tower of dreams I cannot have as much of him as I want. But, Sister! I am no prince of darkness. If I have plunged into chaos it is because that is where the money is. I am lonely there as a good angel would be in hell. I won’t be with David. I tell you, one can be lonely and untouched even at a Reception, one can be guileless even in a courtroom. I am. These things pass over me like sticks and stones--smarting my skin. I do not want to change David. I want him near me. I want him to change _me_. Your mistake is the horror you have for surroundings that you know nothing about. A usual result of ignorance, my dearest. David will be as unchanged, certainly, as I.” “Why do you want to drag him into your noisy world?” “I can’t have a friend, by long distance.” “There’s something more in it than that.” Tom looked, not to deny but to learn. His face was open, sincerely in search. “I don’t understand,” she went on. “If you really wanted him to change you, were willing at all to be like him, you’d meet him half way. I have seen how you ply him with your cynicisms, heckle him with your invitations to ‘begin to live.’” “If I met him half way I’d come back with half a practice.” “Nonsense! You could live your professional life without him. Social demands don’t go into one’s intimate hours. There is something else. You really want to take David about with you--into the thick of the scrimmage. Every word you say to him is a sort of preparation for his entrance. Why?” Tom was silent. He loved his sister’s trenchancy too well not to admit her points. His doubts brewed energy. He got up and paced the floor to slough it off. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he repeated. He stopped. “Cornelia, I may be queer.... I guess I am a man of action. What else is there to _do_ with him?” She looked at her brother soberly. She knew he had touched a deep chord. He went on: “My muscles seem to be very near my nerves. My muscles must move, as soon as my nerves feel. Do you understand? If I am glad, I dance. If I am hurt, even now, I am liable to cry. You know that. Don’t you remember, Cornelia, at the Farm, when I had made a particularly perfect mud-pie, how I brought it into the house and placed it intact on your table--even though it meant a mess and a licking? It was mine: I had to bring it in to you. Well: David can teach me dreams and truth: but I’ve made a mud-pie of the world. He must share it....” * * * * * He had his days of offensive against Cornelia. “You want to make a child of him. You want to keep him a child. Motherer!” “He is a child.” “Aren’t you glad?” “Well, if I am? Mayn’t one be happy with something that one finds?” “What of David? He can’t have you for a mother all his life. Some day he will be compelled to sally out.”