“Yes,” replied Hawtrey, “he evidently does. If the market had gone with us I’d have fallen in with his views. As it hasn’t, every man’s wages count.”
Agatha was conscious of a little thrill of repugnance. Of late Gregory’s ideas had frequently jarred on her.
“Does that release you?”
Hawtrey did not answer this.
“I’ll keep those men on if you want me to,” he promised.
Agatha winced at this. She had discovered that she must not look for too much from Gregory, but to realize that he had practically no sense of moral obligation, and could be influenced to do justice only by the expectation of obtaining her favor positively hurt her.
“I want them kept on, but I don’t want you to do it for that reason,” she said. “Can’t you grasp the distinction, Gregory?”
A trace of darker color dyed Hawtrey’s face, but while she was a little surprised at the evidence that he felt her rebuke, he looked at her steadily. He had not thought much about her during the last month, but now the faint scorn in her voice aroused his resentment.
“Now,” he said, “there are just three reasons, Aggy, why you should have troubled yourself about this thing. You are, perhaps, a little sorry for Moran’s wife, but as you haven’t even seen her that can hardly count for much. The next is, that you don’t care to see me doing what you regard as a shabby thing; perhaps it is a shabby thing in some respects, but I feel it’s justifiable. Of course, if that’s your reason there’s a sense in which, while not exactly complimentary—it’s consoling.”
He broke off, and looked at her with a question in his eyes, and it cost Agatha an effort to meet his. She was not prudish or overconscious of her own righteousness, but once or twice, after the shock of her disillusionment in regard to him had lessened, she had dreamed of the possibility of endowing him little by little with some of the qualities she had once fancied he possessed, and, as she vaguely thought of it, rehabilitating him. Now, however, the thing seemed impossible, and, what was more, the desire to bring it about had gone. Hateful as the situation was becoming, she was honest, and she could not let him credit her with a motive that had not influenced her.