Jane, listening to Martha's honest and
just compliments and to the faint murmurs of the city's dusty,
sweaty toil, had a delicious sense of the superiority of her
lot--a feeling that somehow there must be something in the theory
of rightfully superior and inferior classes--that in taking what
she had not earned she was not robbing those who had earned it,
as her reason so often asserted, but was being supported by the
toil of others for high purposes of aesthetic beauty. Anyhow,
why heat one's self wrestling with these problems?
When she was sure that Victor Dorn must have returned she called
him on the telephone. ``Can't you come out to see me to-night?''
said she. ``I've something important--something YOU'LL think
important-- to consult you about.'' She felt a refusal forming
at the other end of the wire and hastened to add: ``You must
know I'd not ask this if I weren't certain you would be glad you
came.''
``Why not drop in here when you're down town?'' suggested Victor.
She wondered why she did not hang up the receiver and forget him.
But she did not. She murmured, ``In due time I'll punish you for
this, sir,'' and said to him: ``There are reasons why it's
impossible for me to go there just now. And you know I can't
meet you in a saloon or on a street corner.''
``I'm not so sure of that,'' laughed he. ``Let me see. I'm very
busy. But I could come for half an hour this afternoon.''
She had planned an evening session, being well aware of the
favorable qualities of air and light after the matter-of-fact sun
has withdrawn his last rays.
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