“You’ve still got me,” said I jovially, yet in earnest too. “Lots of women lose their husbands. I’ve never had a single impulse to wander.”
In the candor of that intimacy she gave me a most unflattering look—a look a woman does well not to cast at a man unless she is more absolutely sure of him than anyone can be of anything in this uncertain world. I laughed as if I thought she meant that look as a jest; I put the look away in my memory with a mark on it that meant “to be taken out and examined at leisure.” But she was absorbed in her chagrin over her social failure; she probably hardly realized I was there.
“Well, what’s the next move?” inquired I presently.
“You’ve got to help,” replied she—and I knew this was what she had been revolving in her mind all evening.
“Anything that doesn’t take me away from business, or keep me up too late to fit myself for the next day.”
“Business—always business,” said she, in deepest disgust. “Do you never think of anything else?”
“My business and my family—that’s my life,” said I.
“Not your family,” replied she. “You care nothing about them.”
“Edna,” I said sharply, “that is unjust and untrue.”
“Oh, you give them money, if that’s what you mean,” said she disdainfully.