The look of one trapped settled over Albert,
"I think I'd rather walk," he said; "those cabs are reckless and the meters run up so."
"Don't curl up your lips so, Lilly, over a little economy. Albert's right. What good does it do you to earn, the way you spend? Your husband has forty thousand dollars to show, and what have you to show? Taxicab rides don't draw any interest. Don't be so ready to curl up your lips."
"Why, mamma, you imagine things!" And to Albert, "Of course, let's walk."
For two hours, then, oftentimes stopping to face each other, they paced the wind-swept rectangle of the reservoir in Central Park, spring out in the air, but quite a tear of breeze across their high place.
He was sullen, casuistic, and impenetrable as a sea wall under a dashing, and the thought came to her that had he presented any other surface it would have been easier.
"Well, Albert," she began, facing him there in the wide afternoon light, "what is there that we two can say to each other?"
"Words," he said, stodgy in his bitterness, "mean nothing against seventeen years."
"You're right. And yet—I want you to know, Albert—before you go across—"
"Don't be too sure you'll be rid of me that way."