Lydia folded her hands in her lap and sat looking at him intently. In the tumult of her emotions there was neither bitterness nor resentment. But a cloud had passed between her and the sun. She sat there a long time, her face very pale and grave. After a time she laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder. She felt an intolerable need to feel him at least physically near.
The telephone bell rang distinctly in the hall. Paul bounded to his feet, wide awake.
“I bet that’s the Washburn superintendent!” he cried. “He said they might call me up here if they came to a decision.” He had apparently forgotten Lydia’s presence, or else the fact that she knew nothing of his affairs. He disappeared into the hall, his long, springy, active step resounding quickly as he hurried to the instrument. Lydia heard his voice, decisive, masterful, quiet, evidently dictating terms of some bargain that had been hanging in the balance. When he came back, his head was up, like a conqueror’s. “I’ve got their contract!” he told her, and then, snatching her up, he whirled her about, shouting out a “yip! yip! yip!” of triumph.
In spite of herself Lydia’s chin began to tremble. She felt a stinging in her eyes. Paul saw these signs of emotion and was conscience-stricken. “Oh, I’m a black-hearted monster!” he cried, in burlesque contrition. “I must have dropped off just as you began your spiel. But, Lydia, if you’d taken that West Virginia trip, you’d go to sleep if the Angel Gabriel were blowing his horn! I was gone three days, you know, and, honest, I didn’t have three hours’ consecutive sleep! Don’t be too mad at me. Start over again. I’ll listen to every word, honest to gracious I will. I feel as waked up as a fighting cock, anyhow, by this Washburn business! To think I’ve pulled that off at last!”
“I’m not mad at you, Paul,” said Lydia, trying to speak steadily, and holding with desperate resolution to her purpose of communicating with her husband. “I’m mad at the conditions that made you so sleepy you couldn’t keep awake! All I had to say is that I don’t like our way of life—I don’t see that it’s making us any better, and I want Ariadne—I want our children to have a better one. I want you to help me make it so.”
Paul stared at her, stupefied by this attack on axioms. “Good gracious, my dear! What are you talking about? ‘Our way of life!’ What do you mean? There’s nothing peculiar about the way we live. Our life is just like everybody else’s.”
Lydia burned with impatience at the appearance of this argument, beyond which she had never been able to induce her mother or Marietta to advance a step. She cried out passionately: “What if it is! If it’s not the right kind of life, what difference does it make if everybody’s life is like it!”
The idea which her excitement instantly suggested to Paul was reassuring. Before Ariadne came, he remembered, Lydia had had queer spells of nervous tension. He patted her on the shoulder and spoke in the tone used to soothe a nervous horse. “There, Lydia! There, dear! Don’t get so wrought up! Remember you’re not yourself. You do too much thinking. Come, now, just curl up here and put your head on my—”
Lydia feared greatly the relaxing influence of his caressing touch. If once he put forth his personal magnetism, it would be so hard to go on. She drew away gently. “Can anybody do too much thinking, Paul? The trouble must be that I’m not thinking right. And, oh, I want to, so! Please help me! Everybody says you have such a wonderful head for organization and for science—if I were a dynamo that wasn’t working, you could set me right!”
Paul laughed, and made another attempt to divert her. “I couldn’t if the dynamo looked as pretty and kissable as you do!” He was paying very little attention to what she said. He was only uncomfortable and uneasy to see her so white and trembling. He wished he had proposed taking her out for the evening. She had been having too dull a time. He ought to see that she got more amusement. They said that comic opera now running in town was very funny.