“It’s easy to make the mob weep,” he answered with a sneer. “What fools they are! As if there was anything in that sort of slush.”
Emily was simply listening, was not even looking comment.
“I don’t suppose that anybody ever unselfishly cared for anybody else since the world began,” he went on. “It’s always vanity and self-interest. The difference between the mob and the intelligent few is that the mob is hypocritical and timid, while intelligent people frankly reach out for what they want.”
“Your scheme of life has at least the merit of directness,” said Emily, turning away to go to her desk.
On the plea that he wished to discuss work with her he practically compelled her to dine with him two or three times a week. While his lips were busy with adroit praises of her ability his eyes were appealing to her vanity as a woman—and he was not so unskilful at that mode of attack as he had seemed at first. He exploited her articles in the Sunday magazine, touching them up himself and—as she could not but see—greatly improving them. He asked Stilson to raise her salary, and it was done.
She did not discourage him. She was passive, maintaining her business-like manner. But after leaving him she always had a feeling of depression and self-disapproval. She liked the display of her work, she liked the sense of professional importance which he gave her, she did not dislike his flatteries. She tried to force herself to look at the truth, to see that all he said and did arose from the basest of motives, unredeemed by a single trace of an adornment of sentiment. But, though she pretended to herself that she understood him perfectly, her vanity was insidiously aiding her strong sense of the politic to draw her on. “What can I do?” she pleaded to herself. “I must earn my living. I must assume, as long as I possibly can, that everything is all right.”
While she was thus drifting, helpless to act and desperately trying to hope that a crisis was not coming, she met Stilson one morning in the entrance-hall of the Democrat Building. As always, his sombre expression lighted and he stopped her.
“How are you getting on with Gammell?” he asked, in his voice that exactly suited the resolute set of his jaw and the aggressive forward thrust of his well-shaped head.
At Gammell’s name she became embarrassed, almost ashamed. No one knew better than she what a powerful effect Stilson had upon sensitive people in making them guiltily self-conscious if there was reason for it. She could not help dropping her eyes, and her confusion was not decreased by the fear that he would misconstrue her manner into a confession worse than the truth. But she was showing less of her mind than she thought.
“Oh—splendidly,” she replied. “I like him much better than at first. He makes us work and that has been well for me.”