People Like That | Page 9

a bit of brightness. I went over to play that they might dance.
She is fond of music and an old piano has recently been given her
by--by some one interested in her."
For a moment there was silence, then throwing his cigar in the fire,
Selwyn got up and stood looking down at me. In his eyes was strange
worry and unrest.
"I beg your pardon." He bit his lips. "I've been pretty ragged of late and
I'm always thoughtless. For two weeks I've seen no one--that is, no
friend of yours or mine who hasn't asked me why you have done so
inexplicable a thing as to leave everybody you know and go into a part
of the town where you know nobody and where--"
"It's because I want to know all sorts of people." Something in Selwyn's
face stopped me, and, getting up from the sofa, I went over to the
window and raised it slightly. My heart was pounding. I could laugh
away the questions of others and ignore their comments, but with
Selwyn this would be impossible. An overwhelming sense of distance
and separation came over me demoralizingly as I pretended to
rearrange the curtain, and for a moment words would not come.
I knew, of course, that Selwyn had neither patience nor sympathy with
my desire to know more of life than I could learn in the particular
world into which I had been born, but the keener realization to-night
made between us a wide and separating gulf, and I felt suddenly alone
and uncertain, and dispirited and afraid.
In our love of books, of digging deep into certain subjects, of historic
questing and speculative discussions we are closely sympathetic, but in
many viewpoints we are as apart as the poles. Perhaps we will always
be.

Selwyn by heritage and training and natural inclination is conventional
and conservative. I am not. To walk in beaten tracks is not easy for me.
I want to explore for myself. He thinks a woman has no business in
by-paths. Our opposing beliefs do not make for placid friendship.
It is Selwyn's indifference to life, to its problems and struggles and
many-sidedness, that makes me at times impatient with him beyond
restraint. In his profession he is successful. His ambition makes him
work, but a weariness of things, of the unworthwhileness of human
effort, the futility of striving, the emptiness of achievement, possesses
him frequently, and in his dark days he pays the penalty of his points of
view. If only he could see, could understand--.
I turned from the window and again sat down in my corner of the sofa
and motioned him to take his seat.
"Don't let's argue to-night. I'm pretty tired and argument would do no
good. We'd just say things we shouldn't. You said just now you
doubted if you knew why I was here. I may not be sure of all my
reasons, but one of them is, I wanted to get away from--there." My
hand made motion in a vague direction intended for my former
neighborhood.
"Do you find this section of the city a satisfactory change?" Selwyn's
tone was ironic. He looked for a moment into the eyes I raised to his,
then turned away and, hands in his pockets, began to walk up and down
the room. When he spoke again his voice had changed.
"Don't mind anything I say to-night. I shouldn't have come. I'm a bit
raw yet that you should have done this without telling me. You have a
right to do as you choose, of course, only--. Besides getting away from
your old life--were there other reasons?"
"Not very definite ones." Into my face came surge of color, and, turning,
I cut off the light in the lamp behind me. "When one is in a parade one
can't see what it looks like, very often doesn't understand where it is
going. I want to see the one I was in, see from the sidewalk the kind of
human beings who are in it, and what they are doing with their time

and energies and opportunities and knowledge and preparedness
and--oh, with all the things that make their position in life a more
responsible one than--than the people's down here."
"Was it necessary to come to Scarborough Square to watch--your
parade? One can stand off anywhere."
"But I don't want just to stand off. I want to see with the eyes of the
people who look at us, the people who don't approve of us, though they
envy us. We're so certain they're a hard lot to deal with, to do for, to
make anything of--these people we don't know save from charity
contact, perhaps,--that I've sometimes wondered if they ever despair of
us, think we, too, are