"And you musn't see him when he sends for you," said I. "He'll come as soon as his money gives out. She'll see that he does."
"But you aren't going to cut him off!"
"Just that," said I.
A long silence, then I added in answer to her expression: "And you must not let him have a cent, either."
In a gust of anger, probably at my having read her thoughts, she blurted out: "One would think it was your money."
I had seen that thought in her eyes, had watched her hold it back behind her set teeth, many times in our married years. And I now thanked my stars I had had the prudence to get ready for the inevitable moment when she would speak it. But at the same time I could not restrain a flush of shame. "It is my money," I forced myself to say. "Ask your brother. He'll tell you what I've forbidden him to tell before—that I have twice rescued you and him from bankruptcy."
"With our own money," she retorted, hating herself for saying it, but goaded on by a devil that lived in her temper and had got control many a time, though never before when I happened to be the one with whom she was at outs.
"No—with my own," I replied tranquilly.
"Your own!" she sneered. "Every dollar you have has come through what you got by marrying me—through what you married me for. Where would you be if you hadn't married me? You know very well. You'd still be fighting poverty as a small lawyer in Pulaski, married to Betty Crosby or whatever her name was." And she burst into hysterical tears. At last she was showing me the secrets that had been tearing at her, was showing me her heart where they had torn it.
"Probably," said I in my usual tone, when she was calm enough to hear me. "So, that's what you brood over?"