“I—er—was merely wondering,” he said, “if a life of lawlessness could not offer greater rewards than—ah—respectable journalism.”
“Are you proposing that I become a—rum runner?”
“Not exactly,” said Evan Bartholomew, “not precisely. I was, so to speak, offering you an opportunity to exercise your reason.... If exercise is salubrious for the body, why not for the mind?” He cleared his throat and turned his back upon her abruptly.
“The various sciences you have studied,” she said, sharply, “did not include good manners.”
“As I understand it,” said Evan, “our relations are not social, but purely of a business nature. If I am in error, I beg you to correct me.”
Carmel smiled. What a strange, self-centered, egotistical little creature he was! So this was what became of infant prodigies.... They dried up into dusty intellect, lived for intellect alone; became a species of hermit living in social poverty in the cave of their own skulls!
“I cannot,” she said, “fancy you in any relation which remotely approximated social.”
“H’m!” said Professor Pell.
CHAPTER VI
IT was on the morning following the issuance of the second publication of the Free Press under Carmel’s editorship that she became uneasily aware of a marked scrutiny of herself by Evan Bartholomew Pell. There was nothing covert about his study of her; it was open and patent and unabashed. He stared at her. He watched her every movement, and his puckered eyes, wearing their most studious expression, followed her every movement. It was the first sign of direct interest he had manifested in her as a human being—as distinct from an employer—and she wondered at it even while it discomfited her. Even a young woman confident in no mean possession of comeliness may be discomfited by a persistent stare. It was not an admiring stare; rather it was a researchful stare, a sort of anatomical stare. Being a direct young person, Carmel was about to ask him what he meant by it, when he spared her the trouble.