ere, 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. Come
now--you admit certain dissatisfactions with yourself, so--why not go
with intensity into just the things you teach--and not touch quite so
many other things?

HOLDEN: I couldn't teach anything if I didn't feel free to go wherever
that thing took me. Thirty years ago I was asked to come to this college
precisely because my science was not in isolation, because of my vivid
feeling of us as a moment in a long sweep, because of my faith in the
greater beauty our further living may unfold.

(HARRY _enters_.)

HARRY: Excuse me. Miss Morton is here now, Mr Fejevary.

FEJEVARY: (_frowns, hesitates_) Ask her to come up here in five minutes
(_After_ HARRY _has gone_) I think we've thrown a scare into Madeline. I
thought as long as she'd been taken to jail it would be no worse for us
to have her stay there awhile. She's been held since one o'clock. That
ought to teach her reason.

HOLDEN: Is there a case against her?

FEJEVARY: No, I got it fixed up. Explained that it was just college girl
foolishness--wouldn't happen again. One reason I wanted this talk with
you first, if I do have any trouble with Madeline I want you to help me.

HOLDEN: Oh, I can't do that.

FEJEVARY: You aren't running out and clubbing the police. Tell her
she'll have to think things over and express herself with a little more
dignity.

HOLDEN: I ask to be excused from being present while you talk with her.

FEJEVARY: But why not stay in the library--in case I should need you.
Just take your books over to the east alcove and go on with what you
were doing when I came in.

HOLDEN: (_with a faint smile_) I fear I can hardly do that. As to
Madeline--

FEJEVARY: You don't want to see the girl destroy herself, do you? I
confess I've always worried about Madeline. If my sister had lived-