Penniman no encouragement
whatever to visit his office, which he had already represented to her
as a place peculiarly and unnaturally difficult to find. But as she
persisted in desiring an interview--up to the last, after months of
intimate colloquy, she called these meetings "interviews"--he agreed
that they should take a walk together, and was even kind enough to
leave his office for this purpose, during the hours at which business
might have been supposed to be liveliest. It was no surprise to him,
when they met at a street corner, in a region of empty lots and
undeveloped pavements (Mrs. Penniman being attired as much as
possible like a "woman of the people"), to find that, in spite of her
urgency, what she chiefly had to convey to him was the assurance of
her sympathy. Of such assurances, however, he had already a
voluminous collection, and it would not have been worth his while to
forsake a fruitful avocation merely to hear Mrs. Penniman say, for
the thousandth time, that she had made his cause her own. Morris had
something of his own to say. It was not an easy thing to bring out,
and while he turned it over the difficulty made him acrimonious.
"Oh yes, I know perfectly that he combines the properties of a lump
of ice and a red-hot coal," he observed. "Catherine has made it
thoroughly clear, and you have told me so till I am sick of it. You
needn't tell me again; I am perfectly satisfied.
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