In a flash Cornelia’s mood changed. Her perceptions had controlled her—the acute and angular and severe in her. Now she was seated toward him on the couch; it was as if dominion had passed over to her eyes that were large on her brother. She spoke tenderly:
“It’s not a girl yet, is it, Tom?”
“You know it never is. Girls can’t disturb me. I can master women. I am cool and sure before them. But so I was with this—this fellow. Yet it seems, as I look back—quite irrationally, mind you—it seems as if we had had a contest and he had won.” He paused.
“You probably talked to him—flaming revolutionary talk.”
Tom shrugged.
“And he was shocked.”
“Precisely,” Tom burst in. “He was the shocked one—the dominated one, the silenced. Then, why this foolish desire to see him again and throw him on his back?”
“It has been troubling you?”
“I have imaginary conversations with him. I walk up and down Broadway with him, and say: ‘See! what a Gehenna this country’s greatest city is?’ I take him to theaters and gloat and declare ‘Trash, eh? They call it art in New York.’ Even at my office. I show him through my papers. ‘All chicanery,’ I announce. ‘That’s what you want to enter, is it?’ I shame myself before him.”
“Think it over, Tom,” Cornelia followed his silence. “You should be able to find out the thing that is troubling you.”