“Would you really like to see me Director?”
“Of course! All that— Oh, you know; I don’t just mean the prominence and respect, but the power to accomplish good.”
“Would you like to see me dictating letters, giving out interviews, buying linoleum, having lunch with distinguished fools, advising men about whose work I don’t know a blame’ thing?”
“Oh, don’t be so superior! Some one has to do these things. And that’d be only a small part of it. Think of the opportunity of encouraging some youngster who wanted a chance to do splendid science!”
“And give up my own chance?”
“Why need you? You’d be head of your own department just the same. And even if you did give up— You are so stubborn! It’s lack of imagination. You think that because you’ve started in on one tiny branch of mental activity, there’s nothing else in the world. It’s just as when I persuaded you that if you got out of your stinking laboratory once a week or so, and actually bent your powerful intellect to a game of golf, the world of science wouldn’t immediately stop! No imagination! You’re precisely like these business men you’re always cursing because they can’t see anything in life beyond their soap-factories or their banks!”
“And you really would have me give up my work—”
He saw that with all her eager complaisances she had never understood what he was up to, had not comprehended one word about the murderous effect of the directorship on Gottlieb.
He was silent again, and before they reached home she said only, “You know I’m the last person to speak of money, but really, it’s you who have so often brought up the matter of hating to be dependent on me, and you know as Director you would make so much more that— Forgive me!”
She fled before him into her palace, into the automatic elevator.