Mowbray was back only a week from his
summer abroad; but Tom I had seen and nodded to every day, often several
times in the same day, as he went to and fro about his "respectable" dirty
work for the Roebuck-Langdon clique. He was one of their most frequently
used stool-pigeon directors in banks and insurance companies whose funds
they staked in their big gambling operations, they taking almost all the
profits and the depositors and policy holders taking almost all the risk.
It had never once occurred to me to have any feeling of any kind about Tom,
or in any way to take him into my calculations as to Anita. He was, to
my eyes, too obviously a pale understudy of his powerful and fascinating
brother. Whenever I thought of him as the man Anita fancied she loved, I
put it aside instantly. "The kind of man a woman _really_ cares for,"
I would say to myself, "is the measure of her true self. But not the kind
of man she _imagines_ she cares for."
Tom went on; Mowbray stopped. We shook hands, and exchanged commonplaces
in the friendliest way--I was harboring no resentment against him, and I
wished him to realize that his assault had bothered me no more than the
buzzing and battering of a summer fly.
Pages:
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316