Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/452

 really, it's you who have so often brought up the matter of hating to be dependent on me, and you know as Director you would make so much more that— Forgive me!"

She fled before him into her palace, into the automatic elevator.

He plodded up the stairs, grumbling, "Yes, it is the first chance I've had to really contribute to the expenses here. Sure! Willing to take her money, but not to do anything in return, and then call it 'devotion to science!' Well, I've got to decide right now—"

He did not go through the turmoil of deciding; he leaped to decision without it. He marched into Joyce's room, irritated by its snobbishness of discreet color. He was checked by the miserable way in which she sat brooding on the edge of her day couch, but he flung:

"I'm not going to do it, even if I have to leave the Institute—and Holabird will just about make me quit. I will not get buried in this pompous fakery of giving orders and—"

"Mart! Listen! Don't you want your son to be proud of you?"

"Um. Well— No, not if he's to be proud of me for being a stuffed shirt, a sideshow barker—"

"Please don't be vulgar."

"Why not? Matter of fact, I haven't been vulgar enough lately. What I ought to do is to go to Birdies' Rest right now, and work with Terry."

"I wish I had some way of showing you— Oh, for a 'scientist' you do have the most incredible blind-spots! I wish I could make you see just how weak and futile that is. The wilds! The simple life! The old argument. It's just the absurd, cowardly sort of thing these tired highbrows do that sneak off to some Esoteric Colony and think they're getting strength to conquer life, when they're merely running away from it."

"No. Terry has his place in the country only because he can live cheaper there. If we—if he could afford it, he'd probably be right here in town, with garçons and everything, like McGurk, but with no Director Holabird by God—and no Director Arrowsmith!"

"Merely a cursing, ill-bred, intensely selfish Director Terry Wickett!"

"Now by God let me tell you—"