"Will YOU help me?"
"I can't. No one can. You've got to help yourself. Each one of us is working for himself—working not to be rich or to be famous or to be envied, but to be free."
"Working for himself—that sounds selfish, doesn't it?"
"If you are wise, Jane Hastings," said Dorn, "you will distrust—disbelieve in—anything that is not selfish."
Jane reflected. "Yes—I see," she cried. "I never thought of that!"
"A friend of mine, Wentworth," Victor went on, "has put it wonderfully clearly. He said, 'Some day we shall realize that no man can be free until all men are free.'"
"You HAVE helped me—in spite of your fierce refusal," laughed Jane. "You are very impatient to go, aren't you? Well, since you won't stay I'll walk with you—as far as the end of the shade."
She was slightly uneasy lest her overtures should be misunderstood. By the time they reached the first long, sunny stretch of the road down to town she was so afraid that those overtures would not be "misunderstood" that she marched on beside him in the hot sun. She did not leave him until they reached the corner of Pike avenue—and then it was he that left her, for she could cudgel out no excuse for going further in his direction. The only hold she had got upon him for a future attempt was slight indeed—he had vaguely agreed to lend her some books.
People who have nothing to do get rid of a great deal of time in trying to make impressions and in speculating as to what impressions they have made. Jane—hastening toward Martha's to get out of the sun which could not but injure a complexion so delicately fine as hers—gave herself up to this form of occupation. What did he think of her? Did he really have as little sense of her physical charm as he seemed? No woman could hope to be attractive to every man. Still—this man surely must be at least not altogether insensible. "If he sends me those books to-day—or tomorrow—or even next day," thought Jane, "it will be a pretty sure sign that he was impressed—whether he knows it or not."
She had now definitely passed beyond the stage where she wondered at herself—and reproached herself—for wishing to win a man of such common origin and surroundings. She could not doubt Victor Dorn's superiority. Such a man as that didn't need birth or wealth or even fame. He simply WAS the man worth while—worth any woman's while. How could Selma be associated so intimately with him without trying to get him in love with her? Perhaps she had tried and had given up? No—Selma was as strange in her way as he was in his way. What a strange—original—INDIVIDUAL pair they were!