‘Shut the window.’ I did as he bade me. ‘Pull down the blind.’ I obeyed. ‘Turn round again.’ I was still obedient. ‘What is your name?’
Then I spoke,—to answer him. There was this odd thing about the words I uttered, that they came from me, not in response to my will power, but in response to his. It was not I who willed that I should speak; it was he. What he willed that I should say, I said. Just that, and nothing more. For the time I was no longer a man; my manhood was merged in his. I was, in the extremest sense, an example of passive obedience.
‘Robert Holt.’
‘What are you?’
‘A clerk.’
‘You look as if you were a clerk.’ There was a flame of scorn in his voice which scorched me even then. ‘What sort of a clerk are you?’
‘I am out of a situation.’
‘You look as if you were out of a situation.’ Again the scorn. ‘Are you the sort of clerk who is always out of a situation? You are a thief.’
‘I am not a thief.’
‘Do clerks come through the window?’ I was still,—he putting no constraint on me to speak. ‘Why did you come through the window?’