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But we are not wholly barbarous here, Richard. This, for example, and no first-class New England city lacks culture.
I suppose there’s no use explaining, but what first-class New England cities regard as culture your real artist avoids as he would avoid poison.
Well, well. But circumstances—really, Richard, don’t you think it your duty to stay?
Why?
Must I explain? We are met, after a long separation, in circumstances personally sorrowful to me, and I trust, to some extent, to you as well. We....
Yes, a long separation.
I admit, Richard, that from your point of view my attitude has not always been as—as considerate, perhaps, as you might have expected. But I have been a very busy man, and—
As far as I am concerned, uncle, I have nothing to blame you for; but my mother....
Your mother? Surely, Richard, your mother never criticised me to you? She was much too fine a woman. Besides, I helped her in many ways you may know nothing about.
No, mother said nothing. She wouldn’t have, anyhow—and as far as your helping her is concerned, I can only judge of that by results.
Results? What do you mean? I have no desire to catalogue the things I have done for one who was near to me, but—
That’s all very well, uncle, and I have no criticism to make. What’s over is over. But when you speak of my duty to you, I think of how mother died so young, and how I found out afterward her affairs were so difficult. I had no idea—she sacrificed herself for me so long that I took it for granted. But I think that you, as a business man, must have known.
You found that everything was mortgaged? Well, Richard, it pains me to recall these things. Your father, unfortunately, was a poor business man. As for the mortgage, Richard, I held that myself.
You did!
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