"Miss Wakely," he said, "I am sorry to have to tell you something—I am indeed. After this week I must not have you any more."
For this I was utterly unprepared. I looked up at him with all the terror and despair which filled me. "I'm not doing your work well?" I tried to say. But—"You're doing my work," he answered, "as I never hoped to have it done. It isn't that. It isn't only that this failure leaves me with very little money. There's thirty thousand dollars owing to lecture and Chautauqua people, and the company hasn't a cent."
"You mean," I said, "that you will help pay this thirty thousand?"
"There's no one else," he answered. "I'm the only stockholder who has anything at all. And the rest have families."
"Can they compel you to do this?" I asked. It is amazing how the brute instincts reappear in areas new; to experience. I was civilized enough in some things, and yet instinctively I asked: "Can they compel you?"
He merely stood smiling down at me. "Most of the speakers are twenty-dollar-a-night men," he said. "They can't lose it, you see."
"I beg your pardon," I said, and went out to the street in a kind of glory. So he was like this!
That Saturday night he handed me my pay, with, "Good-by, Miss Wakely. I can't thank you—I really can't, you know."
"Good-by, Mr. Ember," I replied cheerfully, and went.
On Monday morning, when he came into the workroom with his letters I sat there oiling the typewriter.