"I have taken off my hat, now let me remove your halo." She was
safe with her conceit; Arnold would always smile at any imputation of
saintship. He held himself a person of broad indulgences, and would
point openly to his consumption of tea cakes. But this afternoon a miasm
hung over him. Hilda saw it and bent herself, with her graphic recital,
to dispel it, perceived it thicken and settle down upon him, and went
bravely on to the end. Mr. Macandrew and Mr. Molyneux Sinclair lived and
spoke before him. It was comedy enough, in essence, to spread over a
matinee.
"And that is the sort of thing you store up and value," he said, when
she had finished. "These persons will add to your knowledge of life."
"Extremely," she replied to all of it.
"I suppose they will in their measure. But personally I could wish you
had not gone. Your work has no right to make such demands."
"Be reasonable," she said, flushing. "Don't talk as if personal dignity
were within the reach of everybody. It's the most expensive of
privileges. And nothing to be so very proud of--generally the product of
somebody else's humiliations, handed down. But the humiliations must
have been successful, handed down in cash.
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