The opinions she had given out, to be sure he shared them more or less; but it hurt him to think women shared them, above all the woman he-- A woman without hope--better she were without heart! Away, away with this unfeminine acceptance of the worst. It made the underlying horror of things more real, more unescapable! Away with such views, except for the occasional philosophic mood of man. Who wanted to have them daily, hourly brought to mind? He knew he should never see Mary Burne again without seeing that dingy circle of the lost, and the look of unshrinking despair that hardened and whitened in her face.
Her old sheltering mother-gentleness, where was it? _His_ old tenderness for the tenderness in her, where was that? Gone, gone, and in its place this staggering dislike! He tried to think that, unselfconscious as she had been in manner, she had been theatrical in thought; he recalled some of her sentences--she was a phrase-maker! She liked standing up there, even before such an audience, listening to the sound of her own voice, and airing views that she no doubt thought original and bold. He did not for a moment realize that just because he in the main agreed with her "beyond refuge," he shrank from hearing himself echoed back to himself from the imagined haven of a woman's heart. It was a situation meet for wry, ironic laughter that the woman he had been drawn to for her supposed embodiment of man's soothing ultra-feminine ideal should be caught playing the part of a dingy nineteenth-century Joan of Arc, urging men to battle and to death.
The _concierge_ appeared, angry and shivery, and bade him either come in or go out. He was in the act of doing the latter when he remembered Driscoll. He turned back and faced the angry woman.
"Go up to Madame Burne," he said, giving the woman a franc, "and tell her--wait!" He searched his pockets, and finally drew the envelope off Mrs. Gano's birthday letter, and wrote on the back:
"Driscoll unable to sleep without some word from you. Please send down a message for him."
The woman shuffled up-stairs. He stood there in the dingy passage, waiting, cogitating. Suppose Mary were to send word that after all she would come when that infernal club broke up, what should he do? He would certainly have to protect poor old Driscoll against her pitiless fanaticism. That much was clear. It took her a long time to scribble a line. He paced back and forth from the foot of the mud-tracked stair to the open door, where the rain fell ceaselessly. With a sudden elation he thought of the change in his fortunes, and how soon he should have turned his back upon all this squalor. A millionaire! Yes, it had a good ring. It took the sound of Mary Burne's voice out of his tortured ears.