Sharlee leaned against the door and looked away from him, out into the
park.
The little Doctor was badly in need of a surgical operation. Somebody
must perform it for him, or his whole life was a dusty waste. That he
still had glimmerings, he had shown this very hour, in wanting to make a
gift to his sick little fellow-lodger. His resentment over his dismissal
from the _Post_, too, was an unexpectedly human touch in him. But in the
same breath with these things the young man had showed himself at his
worst: the glimmerings were so overlaid with an incredible snobbery of
the mind, so encrusted with the rankest and grossest egotism, that soon
they must flutter and die out, leaving him stone-blind against the
sunshine and the morning. No scratch could penetrate that Achilles-armor
of self-sufficiency. There must be a shock to break it apart, or a
vicious stabbing to cut through it to such spark as was still alive.
Somebody must administer that shock or do that stabbing. Why not she? He
would hate the sight of her forevermore, but ...
"Mr. Queed," said Sharlee, turning toward him, "you let me see, from
what you are doing this morning, that you think of Fifi as your friend.
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