“I’m so proud of you, Harry—so proud of your success!”
He almost started—remembering how he had hoped that she would read his name in the newspapers, in a vindictive desire that she should regret what she had thrown away. He saw, suddenly, that it was only her opinion that had ever really mattered to him.
“My dear,” he said, feeling himself a tolerant old man who could afford to be kind from his altitude, “perhaps if I had never known you, I should never have worked so hard.”
She smiled at him as though there were no irony in his words, but only a beautiful truth.
“Harry—Harry darling!” she murmured. “I have helped—helped a little, haven’t I? My love has been what you said it would be—the vital force on which you could always draw? Do you remember that, the night we were engaged?”
This cool assumption of a dream, utterly opposed to the facts, startled him. He looked at her, and had not the heart to contradict. Suppose it had been so? Could he surrender himself to this make-believe which she was playing with an almost childish simplicity? It was suddenly very tempting to him.
“I remember, my dear—and I promised,” his voice broke a little while he hesitated on a self-reproach, “never—never to cut myself off from it—never to say the harsh word which you warned me would freeze your sensitive little soul.”
“And you never have, Harry,” she murmured, softly. “You’ve always remembered—always been gentle and kind and loving—all these long years of happiness together.”
His eyes felt sympathetically uncomfortable as he looked into hers, moist in the firelight.
“Twenty-seven years, dear,” he said, caressingly, consciously defiant of the jealous self that watched. He had taken the plunge. “Twenty-seven years last week since we married.”