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Updated: May 26, 2025
The brutality of human success, the anguish of strife, what is it when man is shut within the chamber of his joy! Outside the peaceful rain fell ceaselessly, quenching the flame and the smoke and the passion of the city. "Next week Monday is the tenth," Alves announced, glancing at the calendar that hung beside the writing-table. "Well?" Sommers answered.
"The ice on the lake is first-rate, Alves, and I skated up the shore to see if I could get you for a spin." "I am glad you came," Alves said, with new life. "I was kind of lonely and blue, and the doctor is off on a case the other side of nowhere." "Just the time," responded Dresser, who seemed to have the good luck at present of making "right connections."
A final wave of regret, of yearning not to be thrust out in this way from these lives made her say: "I am sorry you couldn't have let me be a little friendly. I wanted to have you to dinner," she smiled at the dull practicality of her idea; "but I suppose you won't come." "He may do as he likes," Alves said, in a more conciliatory manner. "But he can't!" the girl smiled back good-humoredly.
"That lady wishes to speak to you," Alves said. "I think not," Sommers replied quickly, turning in the opposite direction. As they walked away the carriage started, and when Alves looked around it had already passed over the rough wooden bridge that crossed the lagoon. "Was it some one you knew?" she asked indifferently. "It was Miss Hitchcock," Sommers replied shortly.
He disliked seeing her in the performance of her petty duties, giving commands and reproofs. The principal and the teachers stared at them when they walked away from the school, and he gathered that his appearance there was embarrassing to Alves. So they came to have a rendezvous at the rear of a vacant lot not far from the deserted cottage, which lifted its ill-favored roof above the scrub oaks.
Instead, the board resolved to reduce the pay of the grade teachers, who had the lowest wages. Alves received but forty dollars a month now, and had been refused a night school for which she had applied. When Alves timidly suggested that it would be cheaper for them to rent one of the many empty cottages in the vast region south of the parks, he put her off.
The harmless trio left their table, and in place of them came a succession of transient boarders. For a time he thought he was oversensitive, inclined to suspect his neighbors of avoiding him. But one evening Alves came into their room, where he was working at the anatomy plates, her face flushed with an unusual distress. "What reason have they?"
Like the artist, the doctor, the lawyer, the clergyman, the teacher should be content to minister to human needs. The professions should be great monastic orders, reserved for those who have the strength to renounce ease and luxury and power." The only tangible comfort that Alves derived from this unusually didactic speech was the assurance that he would not be drawn away from her.
"She has fallen fainted," Dresser stammered. Alves seemed to acquiesce for a moment, and her head sank back; then she opened her eyes and looked at Sommers pitifully. "No, Howard. Help me." Sommers raised her, his face much troubled. While he held her, she spoke brokenly, trying to hide her face. "You must know. He kissed me. I don't know why. Make him go away. O Howard, what am I?"
"Can't I send for some one, some friend?" she suggested. "I haven't any friend," he replied absently. "And Alves wouldn't want any one. She would have done everything for me. I will do everything for her." "Then I will stay here, while you are away," Miss Hitchcock replied quickly. "Don't hurry. I will wait here in this room." Sommers thought a moment and then answered gently: "I think not.
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