“What is your position here? Are you here to consider my wishes? What are you paid to do?”
White made no answer.
“Of course if you are dissatisfied with the condition of things here, you have only to say so. It would be doubtless possible to fill your place.”
“No,”—White's voice was very low—“I have no complaint. I am sorry if—”
“You must remember your position here. I have yet to discover any paid position that enables you to indulge your own particular fancies when you please. Doubtless you are better informed.”
Traill could endure it no longer. He was so angry that the blood had rushed to his head, and his face was scarlet. White had flung one glance at him, as though to beseech him to go away, and he moved to the door; but again Moy-Thompson said, “Just a moment, Traill.”
He was so angry that, on the impulse of the moment, he had almost stepped across the room and flung in his resignation. White's long haggard figure was torture; it was cruelty, devilish cruelty, laughing with them there in the room.
The man at the table was playing with them as a cat does with a mouse, shaming one of them before the younger man, as though he had stripped him naked and driven him so into the playing-fields outside, forcing the other to listen, brutally, intolerably, against his will.
The room seemed full of pain—it seemed to cross and recross in waves. White's head bent down.... At last he passed with lowered eyes out through the door.
Traill could not speak; without another word, he turned and followed him. Outside the door in the darkened passage he suddenly held out his hand and caught White's. White held his for an instant; suddenly, with a frightened, startled look, he stepped away.