HOLDEN: Madeline Morton did that!
FEJEVARY: (_sharply_) You seem pleased.
HOLDEN: I am--interested.
FEJEVARY: Well, I'm not interested. I'm disgusted. My niece mixing up in
a free-for-all fight and getting taken to the police station! It's the
first disgrace we've ever had in our family.
HOLDEN: (_as one who has been given courage_) Wasn't there another
disgrace?
FEJEVARY: What do you mean?
HOLDEN: When your father fought his government and was banished from his
country.
FEJEVARY: That was not a disgrace!
HOLDEN: (_as if in surprise_) Wasn't it?
FEJEVARY: See here, Holden, you can't talk to me like that.
HOLDEN: I don't admit you can talk to me as you please and that I can't
talk to you. I'm a professor--not a servant.
FEJEVARY: Yes, and you're a damned difficult professor. I certainly have
tried to--
HOLDEN: (_smiling_) Handle me?
FEJEVARY: I ask you this. Do you know any other institution where you
could sit and talk with the executive head as you have here with me?
HOLDEN: I don't know. Perhaps not.
FEJEVARY: Then be reasonable. No one is entirely free. That's naive.
It's rather egotistical to want to be. We're held by our relations to
others--by our obligations to the (_vaguely_)--the ultimate thing.
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