“But they will not. I have won a position. I can always command a large salary—perhaps not quite so much but still a large salary.”
“Perhaps—if you don’t trouble yourself about principles. But how would it be if you would do nothing, write nothing, except what you think is honest? Would you ask her to face it? Tell me, tell yourself honestly, have you the right to assume a responsibility you may not be able to bear, to invite temptations you may not be able to resist?”
There was a long silence. At last Howard stood up and flung his cigar into the sea. His face was drawn and his eyes burned.
“God in heaven!” he cried, “am I not human? May I not have companionship and sympathy and love? Must I be alone and friendless and loveless always? That is not life; that is not just. I will not; I will not. I love her—love her—love her. With the best that there is in me, I love her. Am I such a coward that I cannot face even my own weaknesses?”
XVIII. — HOWARD EXPLAINS HIS MACHINE.
In August Marian and Mrs. Carnarvon came to the Waldorf for two days. Howard had offered to show them how a newspaper is made; and Mrs. Carnarvon, finding herself bored by too many days of the same few people every day, herself proposed the trip. The three dined in the open air on Sherry’s piazza and at eleven o’clock drove down the Avenue, to the east at Washington Square, and through the Bowery.
“I never saw it before,” said Marian, “and I must say I shall not care if I never see it again. Why do people make so much fuss about slums, I wonder?”
“Oh, they’re so queer, so like another world,” suggested Mrs. Carnarvon. “It gives you such a delightful sensation of sadness. It’s just like a not-too-melancholy play, only better because it’s real. Then, too, it makes one feel so much more comfortable and clean and contented in one’s own surroundings.”