"Well, I can't say that I've looked at it in that light exactly," he
answered. "I suspect I'm not very good at generalising my own relations to
others, though I like well enough to speculate in the abstract. But don't
you think Mr. Peck has overlooked one important fact in his theory? What
about the people who have grown rich from being poor, as most Americans
have? They have the same experiences, and why can't they sympathise with
those who have remained poor?"
"I never thought of that. Why didn't I ask him that?" She lamented so
sincerely that the doctor laughed again. "I think that Mr. Peck--"
"Oh no! oh no!" said the doctor, in an entreating, coaxing tone, expressive
of a satiety with the subject that he might very well have felt; and he
ended with another laugh, in which, after a moment of indignant
self-question, she joined him.
"Isn't that delicious?" he exclaimed; and she involuntarily slowed her pace
with his.
The spicy scent of sweet-currant blossoms hung in the dewy air that wrapped
one of the darkened village houses. From a syringa bush before another, as
they moved on, a denser perfume stole out with the wild song of a cat-bird
hidden in it; the music and the odour seemed braided together. The shadows
of the trees cast by the electrics on the walks were so thick and black
that they looked palpable; it seemed as if she could stoop down and lift
them from the ground. A broad bath of moonlight washed one of the house
fronts, and the white-painted clapboards looked wet with it.
They talked of these things, of themselves, and of their own traits and
peculiarities; and at her door they ended far from Mr. Peck and all the
perplexities he had suggested.
She had told Dr. Morrell of some things she had brought home with her,
and had said she hoped he would find time to come and see them. It would
have been stiff not to do it, and she believed she had done it in a very
off-hand, business-like way. But she continued to question whether she had.