She spoke hastily, pushing back the papers she had been pretending to arrange, starting to rise. But that word or that movement seemed to galvanize the still Charles into the suddenest life.
"Discuss it!" he cried, in a new voice. "Why, we're going to have the greatest discussion you ever heard!"
For perhaps the strangest part of this destructive upheaval was that it seemed to leave every idea he had ever had about this Career completely reversed. One word from Mary Wing about not leaving her mother, and nothing seemed to matter but that she, in her fine recklessness, should not be allowed to sacrifice her triumph and her life.
"No!—please! It's settled now. And it only makes—"
But her friend, the authority, had flung himself into the chair beside her, like an excited boy, and he seized her wrist on the desk-leaf in an arresting grip.
"No, it isn't settled till it's settled right!—don't you know that? Is this your letter to Ames here? Let me tear it up for you now! Refuse the appointment! Why, Miss Mary! You can't think of such a thing! You!—a worker with a mission—and this your great call!—your big opportunity—your duty! Yes, your—"
She interrupted his flowing modernisms to say, quite patiently: "You're hurting my wrist."
"Yes, and I'm going on hurting it till I see that letter torn up! Now, Miss Mary!—listen to me—for once—I beg! You won't suppose I don't understand—now—what made you sit down to do this, and I—I needn't say I admire you immensely for feeling so. But—don't you see—if life's hard, it's not your doing, and if it's hardest on mothers, you can't change the conditions by a hair's-breadth, no matter what you do.... Why, if you were going to marry Donald, and go off to Wyoming, the break here would be just as bad, but you'd never think it wasn't right—you'd know that these were the terms and conditions of life. Oh, you know all that as well as I! You know the duty isn't from children to parents—no, I swear, it's from parents to children, every time. And your mother'll be the first to say so—you know that, too! You know, when you tell her you're thinking of doing this, she'll go down on her knees to beg you to take your youth—and your life—and be free—"
He was deflected by one of Mary's normal level gazes, turned upon him. She said steadily:—
"How long have you been feeling this way?"