“Lots of them go under,” Felix Monet had returned. “I think I came very near it myself... I remember that first night I spent alone in Ward One... I’d been three weeks without a drop of anything to drink. Cut off, suddenly, like that!” He made a swift gesture. “And all at once I found myself in a madhouse. I actually knocked my head against the wall that night... And, in the morning, came the bull pen... They knew I wasn’t insane. My record—everything—proved that! ... When I protested, their excuse was that everyone was equal here ... there were no favorites. ... More lies in the name of equality! The thing doesn’t exist—it never has existed. Nothing is equal, and trying to make it so produces hell. They’re always trying to level ... level. They want to strip you of everything but your flock mind. Ah yes, timid sheep make easy herding!”
For the first time Fred Starratt saw Monet quivering with unleashed conviction, and he glimpsed the hidden turbulence of spirit which churned under the placid surface.
“After a while,” Monet went on, “when I got almost to the snapping point, they sent me to Ward Six. You know how it is—like a clear, cold plunge ... it wakes you up... There’s a method in it all. They know that after a week in hell you find even purgatory desirable.”
“And yet, once you got away, you traveled the same road that had brought you here in the first place... Was the game worth the candle?”
“It was an escape while it lasted, even though it did lead me to prison again... But isn’t that where escape always leads? The world is a good deal like Fairview—a rule-ridden institution on a larger scale... We escape for a time in our work, in our play, in our loves, but the tether’s pretty short. ... And finally, one day, death swings the door open and we go farther afield.”