A moment later a radiant vision stood in the doorway making a pouting face.
“Dick,” said Lena.
Dick started and stiffened himself as though to give battle, his hands rested on the chair-back in front of him, but an instant’s survey of his wife’s rose-leaf face, her well-groomed masses of hair, her dainty evening gown, seemed to inspire another attitude. He threw his arms passionately around her.
“Oh, Lena,” he cried, “love me! You must love me—you have cost me so dear!”
“Nonsense!” Lena gave him a sharp push and spoke resentfully. “I’m not half so extravagant as most of the women we know.”
Dick drew away and became rigid again.
“Extravagant!” he exclaimed as though to himself. “You have cost me my self-respect, a big part of my future and the cream of my best friendship. What higher price could a man pay for the thing he loves?”
“I do think, Dick,” said Lena severely, “that you can talk the silliest nonsense of any person I ever heard. What on earth is the meaning of all this? No—no—” as she saw that he was getting ready to reply. “I have not time to hear. I thought that tiresome Mr. Norris would never go. What can you see in him?—Have you forgotten that we are going to the Country Club for dinner? It’s long past time for you to dress.”
“Imagine it! I had forgotten that dinner!” Dick answered bitterly. For a moment he turned away as though, he would not see her while he readjusted something in himself. He felt like a different man and looked to her indefinably strange when he faced her again quietly. To himself he was saying, “What would Ellery do?” and on his answer to his own question he was readjusting his whole life.
“We will not go out this evening, Lena,” he said. “We’ve come to a crisis in our affairs more important than a club dinner.”