'I don't mean them harshly, Alston; but you have no idea how I dread your absence. If I have any influence with you, you will give up these plans and stay with me.'
'Put off my voyage now, on the very eve of my departure, with all my plans arranged? It would be impossible, Helen.'
'Nothing is impossible to you in business if you choose, Alston,' she replied; 'but you don't choose. You are carried away by the inordinate ambition to be rich. That contemptible money-worship, which is everywhere sapping the foundations of New York society, has you for one of its high-priests, and my comfort and my happiness are nothing in comparison with your desire for the accumulation of money.'
Griswold was silent for a moment, regarding her earnestly; then he pushed his hair from off his forehead, and with the faintest sigh and a grave smile, more in his eyes than on his lips, said,
'You are speaking hurriedly and like a woman, Helen, and do not, I am sure, mean half you say; but even if I have this wild desire for the accumulation of money, for whose sake is it indulged in, to whom is the acquired wealth devoted? Not, I think--' and a grave smile now broke on to his lips--'not, I think, to myself entirely. I go down town in the morning in the stage for ten cents, and I return on foot; my clothes are the standing topic for my friends' abuse and--'
'I know, Alston--I know it all. You are the least selfish of men; and it is for me and for my sake alone that you are condemning yourself to a life of slavery, and making both of us wretched. But this is precisely the reason why I am the person to enjoin you to give it up. We are quite rich enough for my ambition, dear. Stay with me, and let us enjoy together what we have. But for Heaven's sake do not leave me.'
'I love to hear you talk like this,' said he, putting his arm around her as she pillowed her head on his broad chest and looked up with soft entreaty into his face. 'It shows you to me as what I have always known you to be, the most affectionate and most trusting of God's creatures. But though I would give my life to save you a pang, what you now ask me is an impossibility. If I had had any idea that you would have taken my going away so much to heart, I would have endeavoured, though it would have been difficult, to send some one else in my place. At this late hour, however, it is impossible to make any such substitution, and it is imperative that I should go in person; not merely to look after my own business, but after very large interests of others, which have been staked on a guarantee that I would attend to them. Helen, darling, when you say that my inordinate ambition to be rich and my worship of money are greater than my love for you, you talk foolishly, and you know it. To part from you will half break my heart. I would willingly surrender all the profits, large though we expect them to be, of this projected undertaking, if by so doing I could remain with you; but I could not do so without a sacrifice of honour and credit; and, utterly unbusinesslike as you are, you know the meaning of those two words and the value which is necessarily attached to them. Do you understand me, child?'
'Yes,' she said, wiping the traces of tears from her face and looking up at him almost calmly, 'I understand all you say, and I see there is nothing for me to do but to acquiesce in the arrangement. Only understand one thing, Alston; this protest of mine against your leaving me is not the mere pettish fancy of a woman who hates to be alone, or who is possessed by any absurd jealousy as to what may be her husband's proceedings during his absence--you and I understand each other too well for any nonsense of that sort; but I hate you going away on this voyage, Alston. I have had a presentiment about it which nothing can dispel, though which I should find impossible to explain. However, it is useless saying any more about it; only promise me one thing, that you will never undertake such a voyage again.'
'I promise; that is to say, I promise never to sail again for Europe unless you go with me. O, you need not purse your little mouth up in that manner! Charley Vanderlip tells me that his friend Dillon, who has just returned from the other side, vows that Europe is the only place in the world fit to live in.'
'Then Mr. Dillon is a--never mind; I will say not a good American citizen,' said Helen, tossing her head. 'Do you know what o'clock it is, Alston?'