“No, it clearly doesn’t loom so large,” I interrupted.
“What you want then,” went on Dinky-Dunk, ignoring me, “is power, success, the consolation of knowing you’re not a failure in life. That’s the big issue, and that’s the stake men play big for, and play hard for.”
It was, I remembered in my bitterness of soul, what I myself had been playing hard for—but I had lost. And it had left my heart dry. It had left my heart so dry that my own Dinky-Dunk, standing there before me in the open sunlight, seemed millions of miles removed from me, mysteriously depersonalized, as remote in spirit as a stranger from Mars come to converse about an inter-stellar telephone-system.
“Then you’ve really achieved your ambition,” I reminded my husband, as he stood studying a face which I tried to keep tranquil under his inspection.
“Oh, no,” he corrected, “only a small part of it.”
“What’s the rest?” I indifferently inquired, wondering why most of life’s victories, after all, were mere Pyrrhic victories.
“You,” declared Dinky-Dunk, with a reckless light in his eyes, “You, and the children, now that I’m in a position to give them what they want.”
“Well, that’s what I’m coming back to demonstrate,” he found the courage to assert.
“To them?” I asked.