What kept her back, she tried to persuade herself, was not this intangible fancy but the robuster growth of her own vanity. She was afraid, very much afraid, of appearing stupid, clumsy, ridiculous, before James. James had always treated her as something precious and charming and delicate, he had respected her feelings, her instincts, her intuitions, and she had always tried very hard to enable him to do so. But now she was bringing him not a quick feeling but a position laboriously built by reasoning. How could he respect it when he knew how slender, how untried its foundations were?
This thought haunted her. She tried to dismiss it by reminding herself that it was selfish. Half the business was hers, in the last resort the responsibility was hers. These girls had a right, if it was true that they weren't being justly treated, to everything of hers that might help them—her brains as well as her kind intentions, even, if necessary, her costly dignity. She believed that they were not receiving an adequate return for their work. She did not believe it simply because she had been reading books about poverty; she believed it because she had seen for herself that their wages would not secure their health and their well-being. The books had only given her the use of her mind with which to consider the facts she knew, the right words, the right outlook, the right appliances.
Nevertheless it was a fortnight before she could force herself to interview James.
He saw that she was nervous as she sat down opposite him and expressed her wish for a talk, and in his heart he was a little pleased at this proof of her admiration. But he remembered, too, that he hadn't been very kind to her the last time they talked together, and he resolved not to hurry over his answers but to give her pathetic little ideas every chance of impressing him favourably.
"Well, the old lady!" he said, in a very kind voice, "is this the great outburst?"
Mary shivered a little and smoothed out a fold in the lilac satin that lay across her knees. As a matter of fact it was the great outburst, but she wished he had not spoken of it like that.
"Yes, I suppose so," she said. "I've wondered a good deal whether I'd trouble you, but there really is something I want to know, and I felt that you would wish me, as it's serious, to ask you about it." She looked up at him. James's face was bent to hers with grave attention.
"Of course I wish it," he assured her. "I hope you will never shut me out from your perplexities. What is it, my dear?"
She kept her eyes on his, though it was difficult, because she wanted him to feel that she was facing him squarely. "Would it be possible, with the business as it is now, to pay the waitresses higher wages?" she asked.
James lay back in his chair and stroked his beard. He considered her question not because he was in any doubt as to the purport of his answer, but because he wished her to have a full and satisfactory explanation.