Philip Blair ceased walking, leaned back against the railing of the porch, and considered Stacey, with a smile. “By the way,” he remarked irrelevantly, “yesterday I got a statement of receipts and disbursements from the Fund for Viennese Children.”
Stacey frowned. “Oh, you did!” he said drily. “And how did you happen to get it? I can guess.”
“Oh,” Phil returned simply, “Catherine and I send what we can.” He laughed a pleasant laugh. “You hypocrite!” he exclaimed. “Oh, you damned hypocrite!”
Stacey shook his head. “It’s no use gunning around in me for virtue, Phil,” he said quietly. “What I gave them hasn’t at all the meaning of what you’ve given them, whatever that may be. I’ve kept out two hundred a month for myself.”
“Shucks!” Phil exclaimed disgustedly. “You’re becoming puerile, Stacey! Do you think I care about the amount—if any—of self-sacrifice that you showed? The only thing that interests me is that you were interested in the suffering of Viennese children.”
Stacey gazed away absently at the gleaming city. “I don’t see anything strange about that,” he said finally. “There’s been enough suffering in the world, especially among children. You think, Phil, that I have some malevolent philosophy of life. You’re mistaken. I haven’t any philosophy. It’s only that every day I run across suffering—so much of it—that’s caused deliberately. Then I get a craving to destroy. That’s all,” he concluded listlessly.
“Not so much deliberately as stupidly,” Phil murmured.
But Stacey was walking up and down again. Presently he paused before the large window that opened into the sitting-room. He gazed in at Catherine and his father.
Phil, who had followed Stacey and stood now at his shoulder, smiled. “That always seems to me an unfair advantage to take of people,” he said, “to watch them when they don’t know you’re there—like looking at them in their sleep. No,—worse than that. For their personality is one thing when it’s focussed on you, quite another focussed on some one else. You’re not meant to see the other. It contains no adaptation to you.”
“That’s why it’s a relief,” Stacey returned. “For a brief moment you get the sense of being yourself abolished, and experience peace.”