"It is a wonderful chance," said Phil steadily, "but I should like to think it over, if you don't mind."
"Eh?" It was Dr. Huntley's jaw that dropped this time. He had scarcely expected a young man in Phil Lorrimer's position to need to think over an offer such as he had just made. Most young men would have jumped at it quickly as a trout leaps at a shining fly lest the fascinating thing disappear from view before it could be apprehended. "What did you say?"
"I said I should have to think it over," repeated Phil. "Your kind of practice isn't the kind I am interested in, to speak frankly."
"Interested! Good Lord! Who expects to be interested in anything nowadays? A lot of damn women with nothing on earth the matter with them except fool notions, and having nothing on earth or in Heaven to occupy themselves with, dyspeptics, neurasthenics, hypochondriacs, dope fiends, gentlemen drunkards and worse! That is my kind of practice, boy. Pah! Interesting! Of course, they aren't interesting. They are fools. But they pay. Lord, how they pay! They wouldn't be sick if they didn't have so much money. You would open your eyes if you saw my books. But I've had 'most enough of 'em. I want somebody to take the brunt of their damn foolnesses off of me. That is what I want a partner for. Some day I'll be telling 'em what I really think of 'em and it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do. I've got to have an understudy. You've a close mouth and a good head and you'd like the money. Don't tell me you wouldn't like it," querulously. "Everybody wants money these days. The whole world's after it."
"Oh, I want it all right," said Phil Lorrimer honestly. "I happen to want it like the devil just at present. But I am not sure I want it--that bad. That is what I have to think over."
He took a hasty swallow of water from the glass beside his plate, then rose and made a few quick, nervous turns, up and down the room. Finally he came to a halt opposite his host.
"I don't know whether I can make you understand, Dr. Huntley, but it is like this," he said. "I have a drop or so of missionary blood in me. My father is in China now. My mother would be, if she could stand the climate. My sister is teaching in a missionary school in Turkey. I chose the kind of work I am doing here in New York partly because it interested me, but I believe it was a little bit too because of the missionary strain. Anyway, it seems to me a worth-while job. But this thing you are offering me-- Pardon me if I sound rude. I don't mean to disparage your work. It is fine--some of it, but well, the truth of it is, it doesn't look to me to measure up to what we are doing in the clinic and what some other doctors and surgeons are doing in other places. The finest man I know--doing the finest work I know--is in Greendale, a little place just outside Baltimore. He has always been a sort of standard for me--he and my father. If I went in with you, it would be not because my heart was in it, but because the money was in it, and wanted the money worse than I wanted to hang onto my dreams. That is about the whole story."
Justin Huntley smoked in silence during this, for Phil, rather long speech. Phil was not much given to eloquence.
"Well," he said. "Even so. Put it as baldly as that, if you like. It is up to you. A man can't afford to sentimentalize much in this day and generation. Let me remind you, the money is not to be despised. It buys a good deal."
Phil's eyes were lowered. Well he knew, or thought he knew, what it could buy for him. Not Sylvia, of course, Sylvia could not be bought, but the right to go in and try to win her against Jack, against the world, yes, against even his own ideals. The last thought crowded in, an unbidden guest. Suddenly he loathed his father's friend, loathed his smug success, his cynical sureness that he himself could be bought. For it was buying, and Phil knew it. If he took this offer, he sold out, to the highest bidder, his own high ideals. Was it worth it? Was even Sylvia worth it? Had he the right to win her that way? Could he do it?