The door opened. He quickly pulled himself together. Gertrude Marvell came in, and as she gave him an absent greeting, he was vaguely struck by some change in her aspect, as Delia had long been. She had always seemed to him a cold half-human being, in all ordinary matters. But now she was paler, thinner, more remote than ever. "Nerves strained—probably sleepless—" he said to himself. "It's the pace they will live at—it kills them all."
This kind of comment ran at the back of his brain, while he plunged into the "business"—which was his pretence for calling. Gertrude, as a District Organizer of the League of Revolt, had intrusted him with the running of various meetings in small places, along the coast, for which it humiliated him to remember that he had agreed to be paid. For at his very first call upon them, Miss Marvell had divined his impecunious state, and pounced upon him as an agent,—unknown, he thought, to Miss Blanchflower. He came now to report what had been done, and to ask if the meetings should be continued.
Gertrude Marvell shook her head.
"I have had some letters about your meetings. I doubt whether they have been worth while."
Miss Marvell's manner was that of an employer to an employee. Lathrop's vanity winced.
"May I know what was wrong with them?"
Gertrude Marvell considered. Her gesture, unconsciously judicial, annoyed Lathrop still further.
"Too much argument, I hear,—and too little feeling. Our people wanted more about the women in prison. And it was thought that you apologised too much for the outrages."
The last word emerged quite simply, as the only fitting one.
Lathrop laughed,—rather angrily.