"Perhaps—I don't know. I'm rather afraid of a hundred thousand dollars," she began to smile a little through her tears, "but now I feel ten years younger. Is that what 'stop loss' means—you don't actually lose anything?"
"Nothing more than I have sent him in this case."
"And you didn't send him my money—not that it's much."
"Good God, Mary, no!"
"Peter," she began gently, "you weren't happy all the time—I could tell that. You were trying to do something you weren't made for—I could see that too. You are very strong—but it isn't that kind of strength. People like us can't do that kind of thing—we feel too much. We haven't got much, but it represents a lot and our lives are in it, and this hundred thousand dollars wouldn't have been that kind of money, would it?"
"No, I suppose not." Manson felt the tumult in his breast subsiding.
"I know you did it for me and the children, but we don't want you to speculate for us. We just want you—as we used to have you. We have enough of everything else, and we'll all be very happy again. Oh, my dear, big, faithful husband." She slipped into his arms and put her head on his great shoulder.
And Manson, holding her to him, felt new springs of emotion unseal themselves within him. The past few years had not been happy ones. As his profits grew, he was conscious of the spectre of anxiety at his elbow. It had been a simple thing to make a thousand and then ten and then twenty, till, as he marched ever faster toward the siren call, he perceived that he was no longer in his own country, but one in which the landmarks were all changed. Now, with the throb of his wife's heart against his own, he acknowledged defeat, but perhaps it was defeat of that which was not himself.
Presently the little woman stirred, brushed the tears from her cheeks, and, smiling, kissed him tenderly.
"I'm happier than I've been for years. Did you ever guess that people here thought you were a rich man?"