"Eben," she hazarded, "why can't I make myself useful? Can't you delegate some part of your work to me?"
Instead of gratification his expression took on the cast of apprehension, though he laughed.
"What! Do you want to turn business woman, my dear?" he inquired. "Are you ambitious to come into the firm and have your name on the door?"
"I want to have a hand on the oar because I think you have a sort of financial genius and I'd like to share a thing which must come that close to your inner life," she explained, and under the pleasurable spell of her appreciation Tollman found himself expanding with responsive pride. To certain forms of flattery he was as susceptible as a schoolgirl.
"If I have ability," he made modest disavowal, "it's of a slight caliber."
"I don't know anything about your financial rating," went on his wife. "I've never asked any questions about that and I don't care so far as the mere figures go. But I believe you have a gift of business generalship which, in fields of wider opportunity, might have made you a millionaire."
Tollman broke unexpectedly into a peal of laughter. He complacently accepted the tribute to his powers, but would have preferred it laid on with greater lavishness. Quite casually he remarked:
"When I said slight caliber, I spoke comparatively. If the occasion arose, I fancy I could sign a check now—not only for a million but for several."
Conscience's dark eyes must have mirrored their amazement: an amazement which was entirely natural, and which concerned not only the revelation of wealth in itself, but more complex things as well.
The disturbing thought intruded itself that in a land of such sparse opportunities these returns could be wrung out only by a policy so tight-fisted as to be merciless. It must mean draining resources to their dregs. That was an unpleasant suspicion which she instantly expelled with the reminder that her husband had inherited wealth and that in supplementing it he had not been limited to a local field of operation.