It is a world in which we must be just before we are generous. Unfortunately, there could be little question that this girl with the heavenly face had a certain touch--should we say?--of earthy hardness in her, a certain induration of the spirit. She had shown it quite plainly in her general attitude toward Dal in the hour of his need. She had shown it again, in a sort of way, in her attitude toward the Works.
Not, indeed, in her resentment at his letter. Anything but resentment there would have been unnatural, not to say inhuman and despisable, in a daughter. Of course no girl worth a pinch of salt would allow you to stand up and say that her father was a shameless homicide. Her anger there did her the greatest credit: showed beyond doubt that she was absolutely sound at heart.... Trouble was, of course, that she didn't know anything about the Works, and didn't want to know. She supposed that those scores of girls who went daily to her father's bunching-room had nothing to do with her.
The night was cold; V. Vivian stood warming his hands over a second-hand gas-stove, which leaked perceptibly.... Great heavens, how could it possibly be otherwise? Was not this the way of all the world? Let a little prosperity come to a poor peasant, and the first thing he did was to stop eating five from the same bowl. That was Tolstoy; and that was the way, through all peoples and all times, riches had meant segregation from the Common.... Round and round them pulsed the great warm tide of real life, and, stung by this mad blindness, men sweated and fought their lives away trying to scramble up out of the enriching stream upon a sterile little island. You could almost have forgiven them if they were happy upon their island. But happiness is born in the heart, and they who seek it elsewhere in the end hold Sodom apples in fingers through which the pearl of great price has somewhere slipped on the way....
"Mr. V.V.! Ain't you dressing yet!" said a voice from without. "Mommer says remind you it's after nine o'clock."
The tall young man came to earth with a thud. A startled frown gathered quickly on his brow.
"What?... Then I'm late indeed. Nine o'clock! I don't see how it's possible...."
He seized Commissioner O'Neill's suitcase from the operating-table, with a panic show of hurry.
Kern's voice took on a cheering inflection.
"Don't you mind, Mr. V.V. All the swells'll be late. D'you want me to help you, sir? Don't you want me put in your studs 'r something?"
Mr. V.V. set down the suitcase, dealt a mortal blow.