“Oh,” she cried, with a hot fling of her voice, “if you could only plunge!”
His reply was indeed provoking. “Where to?”
“Almost any place would be better than where we are!”
It was beginning to get under his skin. He smarted, looking straight before him as he walked. “Oh, I think I might be a little worse off. Oaks-Ferguson is a good old house.”
She gestured blindly with the fashion magazine. “It isn’t so much just money. It’s settling down right here in one spot for the rest of our lives!” And at length, since he made no reply, she sighed angrily and stopped. “I’m tired. I guess I’ll wait at this corner for a car.”
He paused moodily beside her, and she turned on him with a heavy look in which there seemed no glint now of affection. “Don’t bother to wait. I know you always walk.”
“You mean you’d rather go the rest of the way without me?” She stood with pressed lips, staring gloomily down the street. Finally he continued: “If so, all you’ve got to do is say the word.”
She was witheringly thinking: “It oughtn’t to be necessary.” As a matter of fact, she hadn’t really intended bringing about such a situation; yet even now, as she had it in her heart to speak more gently, words of greater harshness rose perversely.
“We don’t seem to be getting anywhere with each other, Jerome.”
He addressed the ground: “You mean you’re tired of me for good?”