“Is this Mr. Barslow?” said she. “How do you do? Alice is with us this afternoon, and she and mamma have given me authority to bring you home to dinner with us. Do you surrender?”
“Always,” said I, “at such a summons.”
“Then I’ll come for you in ten minutes, if you’ll wait for me. It’s ever so good of you.”
From her way of finishing the conversation, I knew she was coming to the office. So I waited in pleasurable anticipation of her coming, thinking of the perversity of the scheme of things which turned the eyes of both Jim and Cornish to Josie, while this girl coming to fetch me yearned so strongly toward one of them that her sorrow—borne lightly and cheerfully as it was—was an open secret. When she came she made her way past the clerks in the first room and into my private den. Not until the door closed behind her, and we were alone, did I see that she was not in her usual spirits. Then I saw that unmistakable quiver in her lips, so like a smile, so far from mirth, which my acquaintance with the girl, so sensitive and free from secretiveness, had made me familiar with.
“I want to know about some things,” said she, “that papa hints about in a blind sort of a way, but doesn’t tell clearly. Is it true that Josie and her mother are poor?”
“That is something which ought not to be known yet,” said I, “but it is true.”
“Oh,” said she tearfully, “I am so sorry, so sorry!”
“Antonia,” said I, as she hastily brushed her eyes, “these tears do your kind heart credit!”
“Oh, don’t, don’t talk to me like that!” she exclaimed passionately. “My kind heart! Why, sometimes I hate her; and I would be glad if she was out of the world! Don’t look like that at me! And don’t pretend to be surprised, or say you don’t understand me. I think every one understands me, and has for a long time. I think everybody on the street says, after I pass, ‘Poor Antonia!’ I must talk to somebody! And I’d rather talk to you because, even though you are a man and can’t possibly know how I feel, you understand him better than any one else I know—and you love him too!”
I started to say something, but the situation did not lend itself to words. Neither could I pat her on the shoulders, or press her hand, as I might have done with a man. Pale and beautiful, her jaunty hat a little awry, her blonde ringlets in some disorder, she sat unapproachable in her grief.