At this bullet-like retort, Lydia shivered as though she had been struck. She turned away with a blind impulse for flight. Her gesture brought her husband flying to her. He took her forcibly in his arms. “What the devil—what is the matter now?” he asked, praying for patience. She hung unresponsive in his grasp. “What’s the matter?” he repeated.
“You’ve just told me a horrible thing,” she whispered; “that life is so dreadful that the only way we can get through it at all is by never looking at—”
Paul actually shook her in his exasperation. “Gee whiz, Lydia! you’re enough to drive a man to drink! I never told you any such melodramatic nonsense. I told you straight horse sense, which is that if you took more interest in your work, in the work that every woman of your class and position has to do, you’d have less time to think foolishness—and your husband would have an easier life.”
Her trembling lips opened to speak again, but he closed them with a firm hand. “And now, as your natural guardian, I’m not going to let you say another word about it. You dear little silly! However did you get us so wound up! Blessed if I have any idea what it’s all been about!”
He was determined to end the discussion. He was relieved beyond expression that he had been able to get through it without saying anything unkind to his wife. He never meant to do that. He now went on, shaking a finger at her:
“You listen to me, Lydia-Emery-that-was! Do you know what we are going to do? We’re going out into that howling desolation that Mary has probably left in the kitchen, and we’re going to see if we can find a couple of clean glasses, and we’re going to have a glass of beer apiece and a ham sandwich and a piece of the pie that’s left over from dinner. You don’t know what’s the matter with you, but I do! You’re starved! You’re as hungry as you can be, aren’t you now?”
Lydia had sunk into a chair during this speech and was now regarding him fixedly, her hands clasped between her knees. At his final appeal to her, she closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said with a long breath; “yes, I am.”
CHAPTER XXVIII