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Show Acting Alone Page 451 impulse inside of himself directed someplace other than back upon himself. Right on the verge of spouting more of his facile, habitual sarcasm and invective, a quietness took over- speechlessness. Sam stopped talking for a moment, and beneficent thought began to fill his hot orange head naturally and easily. That's right, Sam. Think of Sister Polycarpana. You can afford to now, because you know for the first time in your whole slimy, depraved life that you are not afraid for yourself, but for someone else. Draw strength and masculinity from that knowledge and ask, What would it do to the tall nun to find out that her first - urn - intimate male friend is a murderer? - Oh, come on now, squeaks the Sony, though the play button is off. Get serious, Sammy. Someone Christ-faithful and rational and socially concerned and world-wise and strong like your Polly could take absolutely anything in stride, even that, just as easily as she took in stride the news that you were not Dr. Edwine at all, but just a professorial impostor. Sam stomped on the Sony, crushed the life out of the filthy bug. And he told himself (he hoped not merely in order to keep himself scribbling, a potentially free man) that it would kill Sister Polycarpana, such murderous news, just as it would kill his mom in actual fact. And why kill a live nun to save a practically dead congenital Marxist? So write the book and Gramps won't tell Polly on you. Totally anima-projected, Sam was set and primed to annihilate his ambitions, lose his consciousness, even silence his voice in Sister Polycarpana. Let her civilize him and then assimilate him. "How'd you know my back itched there?" |