As she refracted the facts of life for him they presented themselves in
the primitive old-fashioned way.
But there was another window in his soul through which he saw life with
no refractions whatever; remorselessly, logically. Looking through the
window, as he did when he talked to Barry Lake, or James Randolph, he
saw life as a mass of unyielding reciprocities. You got what you paid
for. You paid for what you got. And he saw both men and women--though
chiefly women--tangling and nullifying their lives in futile efforts to
evade this principle; looking for an Eldorado where something was to be
had for nothing; for panaceas; for the soft without the hard.
He was perfectly capable of seeing and describing an abstract wife like
that in blistering terms that would make an industrious street-walker
look almost respectable by comparison. But when he looked at Rose, he
saw her through the lens, as some one to be loved and desired,--and
prevented, if possible, from paying anything.
Somehow or other those two views must be reconciled before a life of
real comradeship between them was possible; before the really big thing
she had promised Portia to fight for could be anything more than a
tormenting dream.
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