"I'm afraid your little friend at the St. Albans isn't altogether
happy of late," said Evans toward the end of what he called one of
his powwows with Sewell. Their talk had taken a vaster range than
usual, and they both felt the need, that people know in dealing with
abstractions, of finally getting the ground beneath their feet
again.
"Ah?" asked Sewell, with a twinge that allayed his satisfaction in
this. "What's the matter with him?"
"Oh, the knowledge of good and evil, I suspect."
"I hope there's nothing wrong," said Sewell anxiously.
"Oh no. I used the phrase because it came easily. Just what I mean
is that I'm afraid his view of our social inequalities is widening
and deepening, and that he experiences the dissatisfaction of people
who don't command that prospect from the summit. I told you of his
censure of our aristocratic constitution?"
"Yes," said Sewell, with a smile.
"Well, I'm afraid he feels it more and more. If I can judge from the
occasional distance and _hauteur_ with which he treats me, he
is humiliated by it. Nothing makes a man so proud as humiliation,
you know."
"That's true!"
"There are a couple of pretty girls at the St. Albans, art-students,
who have been painting Barker. So I learn from a reformed cow-boy of
the plains who is with us as a law-student and is about with one of
the young ladies a good deal.
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