In the light of his later conduct, I grew to
understand that smile. He had anticipated a rebuff, and he had been
received, as he read it, with consideration. The irony of my politeness
he had entirely missed. Instead, he read in what I said the admiration
of the amateur for the professional. He saw what he believed to be a
high agent of the Government treating him as a worthy antagonist. In no
other way can I explain his later heaping upon me his confidences. It
was the vanity of a child trying to show off.
In ten days, in the limited area of a two-thousand-ton steamer, one
could not help but learn something of the history of so communicative a
fellow-passenger as Schnitzel. His parents were German and still
lived in Germany. But he himself had been brought up on the East Side.
An uncle who kept a delicatessen shop in Avenue A had sent him to the
public schools and then to a "business college," where he had developed
remarkable expertness as a stenographer. He referred to his skill in
this difficult exercise with pitying contempt. Nevertheless, from a room
noisy with typewriters this skill had lifted him into the private office
of the president of the Nitrate Trust.
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