FEJEVARY:  (affectionately) I know how he used to do.

HOLDEN:  He put his hands on my shoulders.  He said, ’Young man, don’t go away.  We need you here.  Give us this great thing you’ve got!’ And so I stayed, for I felt that here was soil in which I could grow, and that one’s whole life was not too much to give to a place with roots like that. (a little bitterly) Forgive me if this seems rhetoric.

FEJEVARY:  (a gesture of protest.  Silent a moment) You make it—­hard for me. (with exasperation) Don’t you think I’d like to indulge myself in an exalted mood?  And why don’t I?  I can’t afford it—­not now.  Won’t you have a little patience?  And faith—­faith that the thing we want will be there for us after we’ve worked our way through the woods.  We are in the woods now.  It’s going to take our combined brains to get us out.  I don’t mean just Morton College.

HOLDEN:  No—­America.  As to getting out, I think you are all wrong.

FEJEVARY:  That’s one of your sweeping statements, Holden.  Nobody’s all wrong.  Even you aren’t.

HOLDEN:  And in what ways am I wrong—­from the standpoint of your Senator Lewis?

FEJEVARY:  He’s not my Senator Lewis, he’s the state’s, and we have to take him as he is.  Why, he objects, of course, to your radical activities.  He spoke of your defence of conscientious objectors.

HOLDEN:  (slowly) I think a man who is willing to go to prison for what he believes has stuff in him no college needs turn its back on.

FEJEVARY:  Well, he doesn’t agree with you—­nor do I.

HOLDEN:  (still quietly) And I think a society which permits things to go on which I can prove go on in our federal prisons had better stop and take a fresh look at itself.  To stand for that and then talk of democracy and idealism—­oh, it shows no mentality, for one thing.

FEJEVARY:  (easily) I presume the prisons do need a cleaning up.  As to Fred Jordan, you can’t expect me to share your admiration.  Our own Fred—­my nephew Fred Morton, went to France and gave his life.  There’s some little courage, Holden, in doing that.

HOLDEN:  I’m not trying to belittle it.  But he had the whole spirit of his age with him—­fortunate boy.  The man who stands outside the idealism of this time—­

FEJEVARY:  Takes a good deal upon himself, I should say.

HOLDEN:  There isn’t any other such loneliness.  You know in your heart it’s a noble courage.

FEJEVARY:  It lacks—­humility. (HOLDEN laughs scoffingly) And I think you lack it.  I’m asking you to co-operate with me for the good of Morton College.