The man's egotism aroused her impatience, but she lowered her head to catch every syllable of his reply.
"I seemed to see things in a flash—to feel an iron crust of prejudice."
The girl's brow contracted in a puzzled frown, but she waited. The young doctor tried again to phrase the matter.
"These people—I mean your comfortable rich—seem to have taken a kind of oath of self-preservation. To do what is expected of one, to succeed, you must take the oath. You must defend their institutions, and all that," he blundered on.
"I don't know what you mean," the girl replied coolly, haughtily, raising her head and glancing over the table.
"I am not very clear. Perhaps I make a great deal of nothing. My remarks sound 'young' even to me."
"I don't pretend to understand these questions. I wish men wouldn't talk business at dinner. It is worse than polo!"
She swept his face with a glance of distrust, the lids of her eyes half lowered, as if to put a barrier between them.
"Yes," Sommers assented; "it is harder to understand."
It was curious, he thought, that a woman could take on the new rights, the aristocratic attitude, so much more completely than a man. Miss Hitchcock was a full generation ahead of the others in her conception of inherited, personal rights. As the dinner dragged on, there occurred no further opportunity for talk until near the end, when suddenly the clear, even tones of Miss Hitchcock's voice brought his idle musing to an end.
"I hope you will talk with Dr. Lindsay. He is a very able man. And," she hesitated a moment and then looked frankly at him, "he can do so much for a young doctor who has his way to make."
"Don't you think that might make it harder for me to talk to him?" Sommers asked, irritated by her lack of tact.
The girl's face flushed, and she pressed her lips together as if to push back a sharp reply.
"That is unfair. We are going now—but sometime we must talk it out."
The men stretched themselves and rearranged their chairs in little groups. Parker Hitchcock, Carson, and young Porter—were talking horses; they made no effort to include the young doctor in their corner. He was beginning to feel uncomfortably stranded in the middle of the long room, when Dr. Lindsay crossed to his side. The talk at dinner had not put the distinguished specialist in a sympathetic light, but the younger man felt grateful for this act of cordiality. They chatted about St. Isidore's, about the medical schools in Chicago, and the medical societies. At last Dr. Lindsay suggested casually, as he refilled his liqueur-glass:
"You have made some plans?"
"No, not serious ones. I have thought of taking a vacation. Then there is another hospital berth I could have. Head of a small hospital in a mining town. But I don't like to leave Chicago, on the whole."
"You are right," the older physician remarked slowly. "Such a place would bury you; you would never be heard of."
Sommers smiled at the penalty held out, but he did not protest.
"There isn't any career in hospital work, anyway, for a steady thing. You get side-tracked."
"I like it better than family practice," Sommers jerked out. "You don't have to fuss with people, women especially. Then I like the excitement of it."
"That won't last long," the older man smiled indulgently. "And you'll have a wife some day, who will make you take a different view. But there are other things—office practice."
He dilated on the advantages of office practice, while the younger man smoked and listened deferentially. Office practice offered a pleasant compromise between the strenuous scientific work of the hospital and the grind of family practice. There were no night visits, no dreary work with the poor—or only as much as you cared to do—and it paid well, if you took to it. Sommers reflected that the world said it paid Lindsay about fifty thousand a year. It led, also, to lectureships, trusteeships—a mass of affairs that made a man prominent and important in the community.
Sommers listened attentively without questioning the agreeable, tactful doctor. He could see that something was in the air, that Lindsay was not a man to talk with this degree of intimacy out of pure charity or vanity. But the great specialist said nothing very definite after all: he let fall, casually, the fact that good men for office work—men of experience who were skilful and tactful—were rare. He had just lost a valuable doctor from his staff.
When the men returned to the drawing-room, Parker Hitchcock and his cousin took themselves off. The Lindsays went soon after. Sommers, who had regained his good sense; tried to make his apologies to Miss Hitchcock.
"Don't go yet," she answered cordially. "They will all be disposed of soon, and we can have that talk. Go and look at my prints."
In a few moments she came up behind him as he was studying the brush work of a little canvas. "I have been thinking of what you said at the table, Dr. Sommers. I have tried to think what you mean, but I can't."
Her eyes opened in frank, tolerant inquiry. Sommers had seen her like this a few times, and always with a feeling of nearness.
"I don't believe that I can make you understand," he began.
"Try!"
"The feelings that make us act are generally too vague to be defended. All that I could do would be to describe a mood, a passion that takes me now and then, and makes me want to smash things."
She nodded her head comprehendingly.
"Yes, I know that."
"Not from the same reason," Sommers laughed.
"I will tell you what it is: you think the rich are unfair. You didn't like
Uncle Brome's talk about the Pullman people."
"No, and more than that," he protested; "I don't know anything about the
Pullman matter; but I hate the—successful. I guess that's about it."
"You think they are corrupt and luxurious and all that?"
As she spoke she waved one hand negligently toward the Aurora in the hall.
They both laughed at the unspoken argument.
"If you feel like that here—"
"I feel that way pretty much all the time in America," he said bluntly. "It isn't this house or that, this man's millions or that man's; it's the whole thing."
Miss Hitchcock looked nonplussed.
"Life is based on getting something others haven't—as much of it as you can and as fast as you can. I never felt that so constantly as I have the last few months. Do you think," he went on hastily, "that Lindsay, that any doctor, can earn fifty thousand a year?"
"I don't know. I hate views." Her voice sounded weary and defeated.
Sommers rose to his feet, exclaiming, "I thought there were some pretty definite
