"No. It wouldn't. But then one changes a lot in eleven years."
"Less two months," he added softly.
Was he actually going to set a stage? But he looked so seedy and heavy and bored, that Jean's annoyance melted in pity again.
"When you think of it as more than a tenth of a century, there seems plenty of time, doesn't there?"
A tenth of a century! It was horrible put that way; an eternity. And so like Jean. A flush crept up to Herrick's eyes and he looked away.
"You have made good. Your tenth of a century has not been wasted."
And Jean saw, as if he had told her, the sordid sequence of the years to him. The knowledge of that dreary waste saddened her.
"I have worked. The East is full of opportunity."
Work, opportunity. The old worship of effort for its own sake. Herrick forced back the words that rose to his lips.
"Yes. I saw that you had done some big thing about tubercular tenements. The papers here had quite a bit about it. I think some one tried to start a movement like it."