"It wasn't so dreadfully hard for you," interrupted Josephine, looking at him with proud admiration. "But then, you had a wonderful brain."
"That wasn't what did it," He replied. "And, in spite of all my advantages—friendships, education, enough money to tide me over the beginnings—in spite of all that, I had a frightful time. Not the work. Of course, I had to work, but I like that. No, it was the—the maneuvering, let's call it—the hardening process."
"You!" she exclaimed.
"Everyone who succeeds—in active life. You don't understand the system, dear. It's a cutthroat game. It isn't at all what the successful hypocrites describe in their talks to young men!" He laughed. "If I had followed the 'guides to success,' I'd not be here. Oh, yes, I've made terrible sacrifices, but—" his look at her made her thrill with exaltation—"it was worth doing. . . . I understand and sympathize with those who scorn to succeed. But I'm glad I happened not to be born with their temperament, at least not with enough of it to keep me down."
"You're too hard on yourself, too generous to the failures."
"Oh, I don't mean the men who were too lazy to do the work or too cowardly to dare the—the unpleasant things. And I'm not hard with myself—only frank. But we were talking of the women. Poor things, what chance have they got? You scorn them for using their sex. Wait till you're drowning, dear, before you criticize another for what he does to save himself when he's sinking for the last time. I used everything I had in making my fight. If I could have got on better or quicker by the aid of my sex, I'd have used that."
"Don't say those things, Fred," cried Josephine, smiling but half in earnest.
"Why not? Aren't you glad I'm here?"
She gave him a long look of passionate love and lowered her eyes.
"At whatever cost?"
"Yes," she said in a low voice. "But I'm sure you exaggerate."
"I've done nothing you wouldn't approve of—or find excuses for. But that's because you—I—all of us in this class—and in most other classes—have been trained to false ideas—no, to perverted ideas—to a system of morality that's twisted to suit the demands of practical life. On Sundays we go to a magnificent church to hear an expensive preacher and choir, go in expensive dress and in carriages, and we never laugh at ourselves. Yet we are going in the name of one who was born in a stable and who said that we must give everything to the poor, and so on."
"But I don't see what we could do about it—" she said hesitatingly.
"We couldn't do anything. Only—don't you see my point?—the difference between theory and practice? Personally, I've no objection—no strong objection—to the practice. All I object to is the lying and faking about it, to make it seem to fit the theory. But we were talking of women—women who work."
"I've no doubt you're right," admitted she. "I suppose they aren't to blame for using their sex. I ought to be ashamed of myself, to sneer at them."
"As a matter of fact, their sex does few of them any good. The reverse. You see, an attractive woman—one who's attractive as a woman—can skirmish round and find someone to support her. But most of the working women—those who keep on at it—don't find the man. They're not attractive, not even at the start. After they've been at it a few years and lose the little bloom they ever had—why, they've got to take their chances at the game, precisely like a man. Only, they're handicapped by always hoping that they'll be able to quit and become married women. I'd like to see how men would behave if they could find or could imagine any alternative to 'root hog or die.'"
"What's the matter with you this evening, Fred? I never saw you in such a bitter mood."
"We never happened to get on this subject before."
"Oh, yes, we have. And you always have scoffed at the men who fail."
"And I still scoff at them—most of them. A lot of lazy cowards. Or else, so bent on self-indulgence—petty self-indulgence—that they refuse to make the small sacrifice to-day for the sake of the large advantage day after to-morrow. Or else so stuffed with vanity that they never see their own mistakes. However, why blame them? They were born that way, and can't change. A man who has the equipment of success and succeeds has no more right to sneer at one less lucky than you would have to laugh at a poor girl because she wasn't dressed as well as you."
"What a mood! Something must have happened."
"Perhaps," said he reflectively. "Possibly that girl set me off."
"What girl?"
"The one I told you about. The unfortunate little creature who was typewriting for me this afternoon. Not so very little, either. A curious figure she had. She was tall yet she wasn't. She seemed thin, and when you looked again, you saw that she was really only slender, and beautifully shaped throughout."
Miss Burroughs laughed. "She must have been attractive."
"Not in the least. Absolutely without charm—and so homely—no, not homely—commonplace. No, that's not right, either. She had a startling way of fading and blazing out. One moment she seemed a blank—pale, lifeless, colorless, a nobody. The next minute she became—amazingly different. Not the same thing every time, but different things."
Frederick Norman was too experienced a dealer with women deliberately to make the mistake—rather, to commit the breach of tact and courtesy—involved in praising one woman to another. But in this case it never occurred to him that he was talking to a woman of a woman. Josephine Burroughs was a lady; the other was a piece of office machinery—and a very trivial piece at that. But he saw and instantly understood the look in her eyes—the strained effort to keep the telltale upper lip from giving its prompt and irrepressible signal of inward agitation.
"I'm very much interested," said she.
"Yes, she was a curiosity," said he carelessly.
"Has she been there—long?" inquired Josephine, with a feigned indifference that did not deceive him.
"Several months, I believe. I never noticed her until a few days ago. And until to-day I had forgotten her. She's one of the kind it's difficult to remember."
He fell to glancing round the house, pretending to be unconscious of the furtive suspicion with which she was observing him. She said:
"She's your secretary now?"
"Merely a general office typewriter."
The curtain went up for the second act. Josephine fixed her attention on the stage—apparently undivided attention. But Norman felt rather than saw that she was still worrying about the "curiosity." He marveled at this outcropping of jealousy. It seemed ridiculous—it was ridiculous. He laughed to himself. If she could see the girl—the obscure, uninteresting cause of her agitation—how she would mock at herself! Then, too, there was the absurdity of thinking him capable of such a stoop. A woman of their own class—or a woman of its corresponding class, on the other side of the line—yes. No doubt she had heard things that made her uneasy, or, at least, ready to be uneasy. But this poorly dressed obscurity, with not a charm that could attract even a man of her own lowly class—it was such a good joke that he would have teased Josephine about it but for his knowledge of the world. A knowledge in whose primer it was taught that teasing is both bad taste and bad judgment. Also, it was beneath his dignity, it was offense to his vanity, to couple his name with the name of one so beneath him that even the matter of sex did not make the coupling less intolerable.
When the curtain fell several people came into the box, and he went to make a few calls round the parterre. He returned after the second act. They were again alone…the deaf old aunt did not count. At once Josephine began upon the same subject.