HOLDEN:  (slowly, knowing what it may mean) I shall continue to do all I can toward getting Fred Jordan out of prison.  It’s a disgrace to America that two years after the war closes he should be kept there—­much of the time in solitary confinement—­because he couldn’t believe in war.  It’s small—­vengeful—­it’s the Russia of the Czars.  I shall do what is in my power to fight the deportation of Gurkul Singh.  And certainly I shall leave no stone unturned if you persist in your amazing idea of dismissing the other Hindus from college.  For what—­I ask you?  Dismissed—­for what?  Because they love liberty enough to give their lives to it!  The day you dismiss them, burn our high-sounding manifesto, Mr Fejevary, and admit that Morton College now sells her soul to the—­committee on appropriations!

FEJEVARY:  Well, you force me to be as specific as you are.  If you do these things, I can no longer fight for you.

HOLDEN:  Very well then, I go.

FEJEVARY:  Go where?

HOLDEN:  I don’t know—­at the moment.

FEJEVARY:  I fear you’ll find it harder than you know.  Meanwhile, what of your family?

HOLDEN:  We will have to manage some way.

FEJEVARY:  It is not easy for a woman whose health—­in fact, whose life—­is a matter of the best of care to ‘manage some way’. (with real feeling) What is an intellectual position alongside that reality?  You’d like, of course, to be just what you want to be—­but isn’t there something selfish in that satisfaction?  I’m talking as a friend now—­you must know that.  You and I have a good many ties, Holden.  I don’t believe you know how much Mrs Fejevary thinks of Mrs Holden.

HOLDEN:  She has been very, very good to her.

FEJEVARY:  And will be.  She cares for her.  And our children have been growing up together—­I love to watch it.  Isn’t that the reality?  Doing for them as best we can, making sacrifices of—­of every kind.  Don’t let some tenuous, remote thing destroy this flesh and blood thing.

HOLDEN:  (as one fighting to keep his head above water) Honesty is not a tenuous, remote thing.

FEJEVARY:  There’s a kind of honesty in selfishness.  We can’t always have it.  Oh, I used to—­go through things.  But I’ve struck a pace—­one does—­and goes ahead.

HOLDEN:  Forgive me, but I don’t think you’ve had certain temptations to—­selfishness.

FEJEVARY:  How do you know what I’ve had?  You have no way of knowing what’s in me—­what other thing I might have been?  You know my heritage; you think that’s left nothing?  But I find myself here in America.  I love those dependent on me.  My wife—­who’s used to a certain manner of living; my children—­who are to become part of the America of their time.  I’ve never said this to another human being—­I’ve never looked at myself—­but it’s pretty arrogant to think you’re the only man who has made a sacrifice to fit himself into the age in which he lives.  I hear Madeline.  This hasn’t left me in very good form for talking with her.  Please don’t go away.  Just—­