“What, have you been losing money?” cried Lena, startled and resentful.
Dick looked at her with a very unpleasant smile.
“No,” he answered. “I wonder what you would say if I told you that I was ruined?”
Lena gasped with horror. For the moment she could not speak. A gulf of poverty—no one knew better than she what that meant—yawned before her. A blind fury against Dick, if he should have plunged her into this, possessed her; and Dick watched her and read her as he had never done before.
“Will you sit down?” he asked courteously. “I want to talk with you—just by our two selves. I haven’t lost any money, Lena. Let me relieve your mind of its worst apprehension.” Her face smoothed, but she seated herself quietly, puzzled and foreboding. Dick was so singularly inaccessible.
“I’ve lost no money,” he repeated, “but I’ve come desperately near ruin for all that. Lena, a moment ago I made a real appeal to your love. You answered me by a shrug and a push for fear that I might muss that very pretty and exceedingly becoming gown. It was a kind of illustration of all our married life.”
Lena still stared at him dumbly, vague with uncomprehending fear. This didn’t seem like the easy-going husband she knew. She wished he would look at her.
“When we were married,” he went on, “I had a dream that a man’s wife stood for his ideals, that he might mold his life by her purity and nobleness and love. I’ve always been saying, in effect, ‘Lead on, Mrs. Percival and I will follow where you lead!’ You’ve led me into the depths, Lena, and I’m never going to say that to you any more. You and I have got to remold our relations and start again.”
“What has happened?” Lena asked faintly, and feeling very helpless. She seemed suddenly to realize how very big Dick’s body was, and how little chance she stood against it. If he was inaccessible in spirit she had no hold over him. She wished he would get angry. That would be something concrete. She would know how to meet it.
“What has happened?” she repeated.