As he hesitated and looked imploringly at her, she said good-humouredly, “To suggest that my standing and not the standing of your magazine, was what you were trying to help?”
They laughed, they became friendly and he had difficulty in keeping his mind upon business. He presently insisted upon sending for Mrs. Parrott—a stout, motherly person with several chins that descended through a white neck-cloth into a vast bosom quivering behind the dam of a high, old-fashioned corset. Emily noted that she was evidently of those women who exaggerate their natural sweetness into a pose of “womanly” sentiment and benevolence. She spoke the precise English of those who have heard a great deal of the other kind and dread a lapse into it. She was amusingly a “literary person,” full of the nasty-nice phrases current among those literary folk who take themselves seriously as custodians of An Art and A Language. Emily’s manner and dress impressed her deeply, and she soon brought in—not without labour—the names of several fashionable New Yorkers with whom she asserted acquaintance and insinuated intimacy. Emily’s eyes twinkled at this exhibition of insecurity in one who but the moment before was preening herself as a high priestess at the highest altar.
In the hour she spent in the editorial offices of Trescott, Anderson and Company, Emily was depressed by what seemed to her an atmosphere of dulness, of staleness, of conventionality, of remoteness from the life of the day. “They live in a sort of cellar,” she thought. “I don’t believe I could endure being cut off from fresh air.” After pretending to herself elaborately to argue the matter, she decided that she would not make the change.
But her real reason, as she was finally compelled to admit to herself, was Stilson. Not to see him, not to feel that he was near, not to be in daily contact with his life—it was unthinkable. She knew that she was so unbusiness-like in this respect that, if the Democrat cut her salary in half, she would still stay on. “I’m only a woman after all,” she said to herself. “A man wouldn’t do as I’m doing—perhaps.” She did not in the least care. She was not ashamed of her weakness. She was even admitting nowadays a liking for the idea that Stilson could and would rule her. And she was not at all sure that the reason for this revolutionary liking was the reason she gave herself—that he would not ask her to do anything until he was sure she was willing to do it.
Two days after she wrote her refusal, Stilson sent for her. At first glance she saw that he was a bearer of evil tidings. And in the next she saw what the evil tidings were—that he had penetrated her secret and his own self-deception, and was remorseful, aroused, determined to put himself out of her life.
“You have refused your offer from Burnham?” He drew down his brows and set his jaw, as if he expected a struggle.
“Yes—I prefer to stay here. I have reasons.” She felt reckless. She was eager for an opportunity to discuss these “reasons.”
“You must accept.”
“I?—Must?” She flushed and put her face up haughtily.
“Yes—I ask it. The position will soon be an advancement. And you cannot stay here.”