"I was talking to Mr. Blair about you,
and he had no words strong enough to denounce you in."
"Yes, it's atrocious. I'm thinking for myself," he said with a shrug, as
he sat down.
"For yourself instead of about yourself! With a dissolution coming too!"
"Oh, I'm safe enough. I'm a martyr without a stake."
"Well, really, you're refreshing. I wish we were safe, and hadn't got to
make ourselves safe; I don't think it's a very elevating process." She
paused a moment and then added, "I ought to apologise for bringing you
into such an atmosphere of it. We conspire here like Fenians or Women
Suffragists, and I know how much you hate it all."
"And you?" he asked briefly.
"Oh, yes, as the clerk hates his desk or a girl her practising. The
duties of life, you know."
She had received him in an exuberance of spirits, much as though she
were the school-girl she spoke of and he a pleasant visitor from the
outside world. When she reproached him for not having come before, it
was only evidence of her pleasure that he had come now; in the days
when he saw her often and was always at her call, there had been no
such joy as this.
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