She shook the door which resisted as it had resisted Letty in the morning.
“Now! You push that one this way, and this one that way—and there you are!”
She opened the door to show how easily the thing could be done; and the door being open she passed out. 202 She had not intended to go in this way; but, after all, was not her mission accomplished? It was nothing to her whether this girl accepted money, or whether she did not. The one thing essential was that she should take herself away; and if she was sincere in what she said she had now the means of doing it. Without troubling herself to take her leave Miss Walbrook went down the steps.
Before turning toward Fifth Avenue she glanced back. Letty was standing in the open doorway, her flaming eyes wide, her expression puzzled and wounded. “It’s nothing to me,” Barbara repeated to herself firmly; but because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, almost before she was a woman, she smiled faintly, with a distant, and yet not discourteous, inclination of the head.
Chapter XVII
It was because she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, that by the time she had walked the few steps into Fifth Avenue Miss Walbrook already felt the inner reproach of having done something mean. To do anything mean was so strange to her that she didn’t at first recognize the sensation. She only found herself repeating two words, and repeating them uneasily: “Noblesse oblige!”
Nevertheless, on the principle that all’s fair in love and war, she fought this off. “Either she must go or I must.” That she herself should go was not to be considered; therefore the other must go, and by the shortest way. The shortest way was the way she had shown her, and which the girl herself was desirous to take. There was no more than that to the situation.
There was no more than that to the situation unless it was that the strong was taking a poor advantage of the weak. But then, why shouldn’t the strong take any advantage it possessed? What otherwise was the use of being strong? The strong prevailed, and the weak went under. That was the law of life. To suppose that the weak must prevail because it was weak was sheer sentimentality. All the same, those two inconvenient words kept dinning in her ears: “Noblesse oblige!”