Winslow Homer Children on the Beach painting

Winslow Homer Children on the Beach paintingAndrew Atroshenko What a Wonderful Life paintingAndrew Atroshenko Just for Love painting
remarked grimly, as we ascended, that passage by so cynical a pretender as Bray, at least, was most certainly failure; and in my discomfort at being so of a mind with Stoker I added that he tempted out his own failings as well as other people's. "I've seen how it pleases you when people call you the Dean o' Flunks. I'll bet you hope there reallyis a Founder, and that He'll pass you for driving so many people to disagree with you. You want to pass by acting so flunked that you pass other people."
"Oh, come on!" he teased. "You're as balled up as Max is."
We went up and down a number of times, for Stoker liked to push the elevator buttons and close the automatic doors in his employees' faces. I continued to challenge him, mainly from the surplus of my distress at Max's condition: his hope, I charged, was that Failure, deliberately elected, would somehow be equivalent to Passage, as the considered choice of a negative could be said to be an affirmation. But there was only Failure in the human university, so far as I had seen, and thus it would remain unless I could in some wise complete my Assignment and bring order and Answers to the campus.