“Do you mean how did I get in? I just walked up. Nobody stopped me. Is it against the rules?”
“It doesn’t matter, as it happens. But I’m afraid I’ve had lunch.”
“Oh, thanks awfully, but I always go to one of those Food Reform places now; I feel ever so much better for it. I was only passing, and thought I’d look in.”
“Good of you,” said Dorothy, and there was a longish pause.
Amory thought it was not very clever of Dorothy not to be able to conceal her chagrin. Amory herself always tried to behave better than that to people who went out of their way to call on her. Probably what was really the matter was Dorothy’s conscience; one cannot hold aloof from the noble movements of the day without at times feeling a little uneasy about it. But Causes can afford to be magnanimous. If Dorothy wanted to out-pause Amory, Amory would let her; and, that absurd picture being uppermost in her mind, she gave a little laugh and spoke of that.
“It’s easy to see you’re not the art-adviser to Hallowells’, Dorothy,” she said. “Must they buy such things? And what are they going to do with it? Get it lithographed, I suppose, for a supplement or something?”
When the subject of painting was raised Dorothy was still a little afraid of Amory and her superior knowledge—but less so than she had been. Twice in the course of its production she had seen “Barrage,” and had stood apologetically silent before Amory’s picture. At another time she would not have excited herself one way or the other about Sir Walter, but new forces thrust some of us into conservatism whether we will or not, and “Barrage” had made Dorothy almost ready to swallow Sir Walter holus-bolus. Therefore she said a little defensively, “What’s the matter with it?”
“The matter!” Amory exclaimed. She was smiling. If Dorothy meant this for a joke she was quite willing to enter into it.
“Well,” said Dorothy, more defensively still, “everybody isn’t trying to do nothing but the greatest things all the time, after all.”