“They are true, dear—they are true,” she asserted. “They are the truest things we have—the dreams of our souls which they will dream again and again long after we have no body. And not only holidays—our life together had work in it, too, didn’t it, dear?—hard and successful work. Do you remember the big case which made you famous?”
He nodded, a smile of genuine reminiscence on his face.
“The Pembroke case?”
“Yes, dear,” she continued, “the Pembroke case. Do you remember how hard you worked then?”
“By Jove, I do!” he agreed, with an emphatic little laugh. “I never worked so hard in my life!”
“Do you remember how I used to sit by the fire here at night, not daring to make the slightest sound, while you worked at your desk, going through all those masses and masses of papers in readiness for the next day of the trial? Do you remember how sometimes you would look up, not saying a word, but just assuring yourself that I was still there and going on with your work all the fresher because you saw me? Do you remember when at last, in the small hours, you finished for the night, you would come across and kiss me, oh, so quietly, and lay your head against me for comfort because you were so tired!”
He did not answer. His eyes stared into the fire, his lips thinned in a tight pressure against each other, as the mental picture of the fact came up in conflict with this ideality. They had been terrible, those nights of solitary work.
She continued, undeterred.
“And then, on the last day of the trial, when you had made that great speech—the first big speech of your career—and got your verdict, the night when all the newspapers were full of your triumph, do you remember your home-coming, dear?”