“That’s right, you piker! Run! Just when you hear the naked truth about yourself, run! It’s like you! It’s just like every man. It’s especially like a Forge, and your father! I understand he didn’t stop running until he got out of the country with a valise of other people’s money! And you ask me to marry you—his son!” “Bernie, I haven’t asked you to marry me! At least if I did, I wasn’t conscious of it!” “Then why are you here to see me?” “To—to—talk over—old times—in Paris!” “Fiddlesticks! Why should I want to talk over old times in Paris, when I despise and detest the place—and all it stands for?” “I didn’t know you despised and detested the place. How could I? The trouble with you seems to be, Bernie, you want a man to anticipate what’s in your mind, or think of what you’re thinking about, before you even begin to think about it yourself——” “Well, a brainy man would! Not being able to do it is another phase of your provincialism—the deficiency and mediocrity that’s held you back so that right now, sitting in that chair, you’re not a millionaire, a great success in life, a big-leaguer socially——” “I simply happened to be ’way off here, passing through Chicago——” “‘Way off here! A long, long way from home, aren’t you? A long, long way from Vermont and the General Store and the Village School and Uncle Josh Weatherbee’s Farm? Faugh! Yes, I think you’d better go! And I’m going to bed—and call a doctor. And if I’m ill as a result of this, your firm will get my doctor’s bill, and don’t you forget it!” V Nathan walked back to The Morrison. It was still early evening. The wind off the lake was delightfully welcome. As he walked he carried his hat in his hand and let that night wind cool his hot forehead. He had been shocked, shocked terribly. He felt as he had felt one night back over the years when he had asked his mother about the origin of infants and that mother had given him a terrifying delineation of the everlasting fires of hell instead. The rapier point of Bernie’s arraignment had cut through the armor of his philosophy, through his very vitals and almost punctured the sac of self-faith which wrapped his pulsing young soul. He tried to analyze Bernie. She was irrational, a monomaniac, a neurotic, the full and final flower of her mother’s infirmities. There were ways in which Bernie was very like his own mother. Yet Bernie had never been weighed down and had her individuality twisted and perverted by the narrowness and mediocrity his mother had encountered. Bernie had been “out in the world.” She had been academically educated. She had met the world’s diverse types and temperaments. What, then, was wrong with Bernie?