She looked back up at him. Was this hypnotism? She felt excitedly supine—submissive—open to this man’s will....
Her eyes, grave—and she herself knew how lovely!—promised him she was ready to do whatever he said.
“Very well.”—But how dry his voice sounded! And already he had stopped looking at her!—“First of all, I should cut off that absurd allowance. Two thousand a year, Petra said it was, and just for clothes! And then I should encourage her to take the job waiting for her in my office. It’s a good job. It can begin on Monday morning at nine o’clock. And I wouldn’t fuss any more about trying to create sympathy between father and daughter. It is too late. The time is past. Petra has had, I suppose, a pretty bad deal from the beginning, but from now on she ought to be her own environment maker. You can’t possibly go on doing it for her. Have you ever heard the phrase: ‘Environment is hidden identity’? I believe that that is perfectly true of any personality, given half a chance. It’s time Petra had her chance. Marriage and a home where she herself is the protecting force—that’s the ultimate answer. But as a stop-gap right now, a job. That’s what I think.”
Clare had sent for Petra and they were waiting. Lewis wandered over to the massive, built-in library table. It was shaped like a scimitar. The last words in biography, essays, poetry and fiction of two continents seemed to be here under his hand, most of the volumes still in their bizarre paper jackets. In the midst of the bright jumble stood two large heavy silver frames holding photographs. One was Clare, the other Petra. Petra was in evening dress and her posture and expression must have been dictated by the photographer. The eyes in particular were self-conscious and static in their inexpressive trance. The mouth alone was sentient, not even the stare of the photographer and the camera together having succeeded in betraying it into insincerity. Clare’s photographed face, on the other hand, was vibrant, with just the hint of a candid smile dawning in eyes and lips. She was not in evening dress but had been taken in a simple blouse with a soft turnover collar. Of the two photographs, hers was much the more interesting and alluring. And so Lowell Farwell must think every time he noticed the two faces in juxtaposition here on his table.
“Just one of Clare’s little touches,” Lewis told himself, wincing. But now he was to get Petra away, out of it. That was exhilarating. He took Petra’s photograph into his hands. He was studying it, and Clare from her corner of the divan was watching him curiously, when Petra finally came in. Clare beckoned Petra to the deserted place beside her while Lewis replaced the photograph to the exact spot on the desk from which he had taken it, and sat down on the arm of a chair facing the divan and the two living, breathing women contrasted there. He lighted a fresh cigarette but did not offer Petra one, remembering her afternoon’s embarrassment.
He began at once. “You know what you said this afternoon, Petra, about wanting to learn stenography and becoming ultimately somebody’s private secretary? Well, I have a job for you that will begin paying right away, and you can practise shorthand and typewriting in your spare moments. It’s in my office, assistant to my secretary. Miss Frazier is overworked. Has been for some time. It has been getting more and more on my conscience lately.” This was perfectly true. “But with another girl in the reception office to receive the patients, answer the telephone, and take the preliminary records, I’ll not worry. You can begin Monday morning.”
Lewis’ voice showed nothing of the elation he was feeling. His tone, in fact, was dry and his look constrained. But Petra, as well as he, had herself well in hand, it seemed. Reticence had leapt to her eyes with almost his first words—a sword on guard.
“Darling! What is the matter?” Clare demanded, but without much genuine surprise. She had never expected that Petra would be delighted by Doctor Pryne’s offer of this job. She knew her stepdaughter’s love of freedom and luxury too well, she thought. And when Petra learned that her allowance was to be cut as well as her days filled with work, Clare imagined she would not even consider Doctor Pryne’s astonishing proposition. Why, this very month Petra had borrowed ahead on her allowance, to pay for the frock she had worn this afternoon. She was always borrowing ahead. She spent more on her clothes than Clare spent on her own. Petra considered that her contribution to the world’s work was making and keeping herself beautiful, and if she had deceived Doctor Pryne this afternoon into thinking her serious-minded and idealistic, he was now to be undeceived, Clare told herself almost gleefully. Watching it happen was like watching a play, immensely entertaining. But while Clare watched, she spoke.
“There’s nothing to be frightened of,” she told Petra. “Don’t look like that. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, darling. It is only a suggestion Doctor Pryne is making. Have a cigarette?” She picked one out of a box on a table at her hand, put it into Petra’s fingers, and finding an automatic lighter, held it for Petra.
Even in his bewilderment at the way Petra had received his offer, Lewis could appreciate what Clare was doing in insisting on that cigarette. Petra was a foil for herself. Physically and temperamentally, all Clare’s effects were heightened by her contrast with her stepdaughter. And Clare, the artist tireless in procuring her own effects, took advantage of even so trivial a difference as smoking and not smoking. She had not remembered to offer Lewis a cigarette, but she was practically forcing Petra to smoke. And Petra’s docile compliance was only one of the ways in which she was of use to her stepmother and earned that fantastic two thousand dollars....