Joan flushed. It was the first time he had failed to give her without question whatever she asked of him.
"Sorry to have to ask," she said, rather stiffly. "But I've given the last cent I had to the Red Cross. Could you spare me fifty dollars, say, and take it out of my next allowance?"
Archie silently got out his check-book.
It troubled her to notice in him something almost like apathy toward the war. The startling headlines, the growing report of horrors, even the eleventh-hour miracle of that stand upon the Marne, moved him to no more than a preoccupied attention. He appeared to concern himself far more with the uncertain state of the stock-market, which he studied assiduously. Joan could not accustom herself to the idea of an Archie commercialized: interesting himself at such a crisis in the world's history merely with money.
An explanation at last dawned upon her. "My dear," she accused him one day, "I believe you've been speculating!"
"Who—me? Oh, every man speculates, sweetheart. Business itself is a good deal of a speculation nowadays. Nothing to worry your precious head about, though."
"Would you like me to economize, Archie, more than I usually do?" she asked.
"Oh, no. You're never extravagant. A little more or less can't matter."
Preoccupied though he seemed, he was never too preoccupied to show her the special consideration and gentleness she had noticed ever since Nikolai left.
"As if he were trying to comfort me!" she thought uneasily. Her queer outburst of nerves with Stefan was something she never allowed herself to think of. She did not quite understand it; and Joan dreaded things she could not understand.