Something in her dismayed glance made him add slowly:
"But if you dislike the thought, we can have a home apart from it...."
"No, no," she said quickly. "Of course I don't dislike it. I want to be right in your life, Joe, whatever you undertake."
Nevertheless her heart sank into her boots. Not for lack of courage, but from a thorough knowledge of her own inefficiency for so responsible a position as she might presently find herself occupying.
It was their last day in the woods. The late afternoon sunlight flickered on them through the half-stripped trees, and leaves fluttered and rustled all about the open glade where they sat. Val, with her camping instinct, had lighted a little fire of twigs, just for the pleasure of the sweet pungent odour of green burning and the sight of smoke curling blue against the silver sky. This sudden news of Westenra's sounded in her ears like the knell of all camp-fires, and sunshine in woods and wild places. Panic seized her vagabond soul.
"Does the money side matter so much, Joe?" she faltered.
He smiled a little grimly. It had never mattered much to him, but she could not know that.
"It has to matter in New York. The man who does n't rustle for the dollars, and rustle successfully, gets left."
She looked at him wistfully. It seemed to her that she did not know this rustler for dollars very well. It must be part of his hidden self that he would not let her reach.
"I am not a rich man, Val. I told you that from the first, did n't I?" He spoke coldly. "I cannot afford to disdain the opportunity that my reputation affords for money-making,"--he had almost added "now," but bit back the word in time. He was far from intending her to realise what a change his marriage involved, what a sacrifice of plans and principles it meant for him to be emerging once more from the laboratory to take part in the scramble for dollars.