V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

And then, as he accepted her tone as dismissal, and his hand started toward his hat, she spoke impulsively and hurriedly:

"Tell me, is it your feeling that this matter--the Works--makes it necessary for us to--to go on quarreling?"

The two stood looking at each other. And in each, in this moment, though in differing degree, the desire for harmoniousness was meeting the more intangible feeling that harmony between them seemed to involve surrender in another direction.

"How could it be?" said the man. "It's what I've been trying to say. But I naturally supposed that you--"

"I supposed so, too. It seems that I don't."

She looked down at her hand upon the rail, and said: "Don't misunderstand me. Of course I think that papa is doing what is right. Of course I am on his side. I think your sympathy with the poor makes you extreme. But ... you asked me the other day to try to see your point of view. Well, I think I do see it now. People," said Cally, with a young dignity that became her well, "sometimes agree to disagree. I feel--now when we've quarreled so much--that I'd like to be friends."

The tall young man looked hurriedly away, down the dusky street. In his mind were his articles, shooting about: his terrible articles, where surely nobody would find any gentleness to surprise them. They were the best thing he would ever do; precisely the thing he had always wanted to do. And yet--well he knew now that he had no joy in them....

"It's tremendously generous of you," he said, mechanically.

Cally's eyes wavered from his face, and she answered: "No, I'm not generous."

Her struggle was to keep life fixed and constant, and all about her she found life fluent and changing. Or perhaps life was constant, and the fluency was in her. Or perhaps the difficulty was all in this man, about whom she had never been able to take any position that he did not shortly oust her from it. Considering her resolution only last night, she too had thought, when she began, that she was carrying generosity to the point of downright disloyalty to papa. By what strangeness of his expression did he make her feel that even this was not generous enough, that more was required of the daughter of the Works than merely withdrawing from all responsibility?...