She gasped aloud. She took his hand—very quietly.
'Joe dear,' she said, softly as in their courtship days, 'such ideas don't come into your head from nowhere. Has some one been talking to you? Have you been reading these books?'
His pulse was very quiet.
'Have you been reading the firm's books, dear?' she repeated.
She asked it gently, forgivingly, as a mother might ask her boy, 'Have you been tasting father's whisky?' The books were meant to sell to booksellers, to the public, to people who needed that particular kind of excitement. Her husband was to be trusted. He was not supposed to know what they contained. His 'line' of trade was chiefly medical, psychological, religious, philosophical. Fiction was another 'line'—for the apprentice. Joe was an 'expert' traveller. He was expected to talk about his wares, but not as one who read them. Merely their selling value was his strong point.
By the expression of his face she knew the answer.
He leaned back in his chair, just as he did sometimes when he asked what there was for dinner—the same real interest in his eyes—and he answered very calmly:
'My dear, I have—a bit. Cogito ergo sum. For the first time I understood, in theory, that I existed. My reading taught me that. But I never knew it in practice until just now, when I heard you ask that question about the future Mrs. Fox: "Who was she?" And then I knew also that you——'
'You what?' enquired Mrs. Wimble, bridling.
'Were unaware that you existed,' he replied point blank.