"Men owe most of their success to the impulse the right woman can give them. Henrietta's all right. But she's so damn dead. She's interested in nothing. Just a child with a child's mind and outlook. And she gets more so every year. Good God, if I had somebody with life in her. Keen and ... who loved me. So that I wanted to be great in her eyes. It would be easier. Somebody ... like you, Doris."
He paused, confused. "I mean," he added, "your type. The intellectual and female combined."
He had long ago told her of his courtship, of the curious way he had tricked himself into matrimony and she had always laughed at his unhappiness and said this—only a fool tricked himself as he had done. Nevertheless his marriage was ideal.
"Men instinctively pick out what they need," she would say. "And a man like you needs a nonentity like Henrietta. You wait and see. Your happiness isn't coming from emotion inside but from emotion outside—the noise of praise the public will someday give you."
But there were facts now hidden in his head to disprove this. He started as Doris announced casually,
"Ruth Davis may drop in this afternoon."
They finished their tea. A knock on the door frightened him. The girl! No. Doris called, "Come in," and Levine entered. Basine nodded to him.
"I'll have to be going," he said as Levine sat down. He disliked the man. Doris nodded. She appeared to have lost interest in him and, her tea finished, she was sitting back in her chair with her eyes half shut and her hands listless in her lap. Levine was talking quietly.... "You look tired, Doris. Like to go hear Lindstrum lecture tonight? No? Very well. I just dropped in to see if you would. Come on."
"No," she frowned at him.
"I'm sorry."