"Ah, but, Electra, to take so much and give nothing!"
"How do you dare to say he gave nothing?"
"I know. I was slow in learning. I learned it first through your brother. No, don't put me off with a gesture. I must speak of him. It was he who showed me the cruelty of my father's attitude toward women. He laughed over it, but he showed me."
"He was never cruel." Electra seemed to be dreaming away in a sad reminiscence of his kindness.
"But to promise so much, Electra, and give nothing! He implied to every one, I have no doubt, that she was his great helper, that he would have married her if he had not been set aside by his work. That was like him. He was a sponge drinking up devotion."
"Yes, and he gave it back to the hungry and the thirsty and the cold."
"I don't know. I do know what he absorbed. One woman did translations for him. She worked like a dog, and he paid her with one of his looks. Another—she was a titled lady—kept his suite of rooms ready for him, and when he came, treated him like a prince. And they all had this sense of intimacy with him. Each thought she was the only one. Each felt she was divided from him by hard circumstance, but she should possess him in the end."
"In heaven?" asked Electra, eager for the slightest knowledge of him.
"No, not in heaven. My father always said his expectations stopped here. He never carried the game on there."
"The great souls"—Electra began, and stopped. Trouble was upon her brow. She knew there was a goodly reason for every act he did, yet human jealousy was in her. She had to seek out arguments. "The great souls are different," she halted. "They are many-sided. Look at Goethe—"