Safely round the corner, she picked up the waiting Durkin.
“That was a close one—but we win!” he murmured jubilantly.
“You’ve got it?”
“I’ve got it,” he exulted.
The woman at his side, for some vague reason, could not share in his joy. Intuitively, in that moment of exhaustion, she felt that their triumph, at the most, was a mere conspiracy of indifference on the part of a timeless and relentless destiny. And in the darkness of the carriage she put her ineffectual arms about Durkin, passionately, as though such momentary guardianship might shield him for all time to come.
She shook her abstractedness from her, with a long and fluttering sigh.
“Jim,” she asked him, unexpectedly, “how much money have you?”
He told her, as nearly as he could. “It’s hanged little, you see!” he added, not understanding the new anxiety that was eating at her heart,—“but I’ve been thinking of a plan!”
“Oh, what now?” she asked miserably, out of her weariness.
She knew, well enough, the necessity of keeping up, of maintaining both activity and appearances. She knew that wrong-doing such as theirs, when without even its mockery of respectability and its ironical touch of dignity, was loathsome to both the eye and the soul. But she found that there were moods and times, occurring now more and more frequently, when she dreaded each return to that subterranean and fear-haunted world. She dreaded it now, not so much for herself, as for Durkin; and as he briefly told her of his plan, this feeling grew stronger within her.