It might be
possible to be nice to her; it was impossible to love her.
"The son of a labourer; I happen to know it for a fact. A
mechanic of some sort himself when he was young; then he took to
writing for the Socialistic Press. I came across him at Brixton."
They were talking about the Emersons.
"How wonderfully people rise in these days!" sighed Miss
Bartlett, fingering a model of the leaning Tower of Pisa.
"Generally," replied Mr. Eager, "one has only sympathy for their
success. The desire for education and for social advance--in
these things there is something not wholly vile. There are some
working men whom one would be very willing to see out here in
Florence--little as they would make of it."
"Is he a journalist now?" Miss Bartlett asked, "He is not; he
made an advantageous marriage."
He uttered this remark with a voice full of meaning, and ended
with a sigh.
"Oh, so he has a wife."
"Dead, Miss Bartlett, dead. I wonder--yes I wonder how he has the
effrontery to look me in the face, to dare to claim acquaintance
with me.
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