“Certainly I’ve known a great many women, nice women, who seemed to be living quite comfortably and contentedly with husbands they did not in the least like. And I am no better, no more sensitive than other women. Still—I feel as I say. Let’s call it a masculine quality in me. I doubt if there are many husbands who live with wives they don’t like—like a little for the time, at any rate.”
“I’ve often thought of that. It’s the most satisfactory thing about being a woman and having a man in love with one. One knows, as a man never can know about a woman, that he means at least part of it. But you ought to be at your beloved office. You don’t think I’m so horribly horrid, do you?”
Emily stood behind Theresa and put her arms around her shoulders. “You’ve a right to feel about yourself and do with yourself as you please,” she said. “And in the ways that are important to me, you are the most generous, helpful girl in the world.”
“Well, I don’t believe I’m mean. But what is a woman to do in such a hard world?”
“Go to the office,” said Emily. She patted Theresa’s cheek encouragingly. “Put off being blue, dear, until the last minute. Then perhaps you won’t need to be blue or won’t have time. Good-bye!”
What was she going to do about Marlowe? She began to think of it as she left the house, and she was still debating it as she entered the Democrat building and saw him waiting for the elevator.
“Just whom I wish to see,” he began. “No, not for that reason—altogether,” he went on audaciously answering her thought, as if she had spoken it or looked it, when she had done neither. “This is business. I’m going to Pittsburg to get specials on the strike. Canfield’s sending you along.”
“Why?” Resentment was rising in her. How could he, how dare he, advertise her to the Managing Editor thus falsely?—“Why should he send me?”
“Because I asked him. He opposed it, but I finally persuaded him. I wanted you for my own sake. Incidentally I saw that it was a chance for you. I laid it on rather strong about your talents, and so you’ve simply got to give a good account of yourself.”
“I cannot go,” she said coldly. “It’s impossible.”