She trembled before his fierceness, but shook her head courageously. “No,” she said, with brave obstinacy, “you wouldn’t.”
“Why not?” he demanded wildly. “Do you think I’ve got any pity in me? Never a drop!” The hot wave of anger passed now, leaving in Stacey only a sick feeling of enhanced emptiness. There were drops of sweat on his forehead.
Again Mrs. Latimer shook her head. “No, I know you haven’t—not at present. But you wouldn’t do it because you’re too courageous. You wouldn’t give up in that way. In spite of you, your strong soul will insist that, bad as everything is, you’ll see what can be done with it.”
“Why?” he asked dully. “It’s all a rotten mess. There’s no scheme—no one—behind it.”
“I didn’t say there was,” she answered steadily. “I only say that any one as strong as you must make a scheme himself.”
“Forgive my violence,” said Stacey apologetically at last. “I get these silly fits when I lose my self-control once in a while. Idleness, they come from, I suppose. Lack of anything to do to work off energy.”
Feeling genuinely embarrassed, he had not been looking at Mrs. Latimer while he spoke. Looking at her now, he was amazed to note the sorrow in her eyes.
“Go away, Stacey!” she murmured. “Go away for a while. I’m—afraid for you.”
“Go away?” he repeated, but gently this time. “Where to? Can you find me access to another planet? Nevertheless,” he added, “I will go if you want me to. Also I note that the pageant season is on now. It will always be something to avoid that. What is it this time?”
Mrs. Latimer laughed hysterically. “‘V-Vernon, Past and—Present.’ The—the whole story of Vernon.”
It occurred to Stacey, however, that he had spent more than he could afford lately and had nothing with which to go on his travels. And this seemed an excellent excuse for remaining at home. But he presently recollected that on one War Christmas his father had made him a gift of Liberty bonds. He sold one, with a sense of resignation. He did not feel irony in the ease with which he could solve all financial difficulties, for the idea of personal virtue, asceticism, was absent from his mind. He was sending all that money to Vienna because he wanted to send it, not because he felt he ought to; he kept out two hundred dollars a month because he wanted them; and he sold a thousand-dollar bond now simply because if he was to go on a journey he needed money.