She heard him through with the face of a graven image. "And now?"
"And now I can't do it; I can never do it, I'm afraid. The Little Myriad has gone back on me, and I'm nearer flat broke to-day than I've ever been."
"But this unfortunate young person who has too much money—she is young, isn't she?—has she nothing to say about it?"
Bartrow answered his own thought rather than her question. "She couldn't be happy with everybody saying she'd staked her husband."
"Has she told you that?"
"No; but it's so,—you know it's so."
Bartrow was no juggler in figures of speech, and his fictitious third person threatened to become unmanageable.
Her smile was good to look upon. "I don't know anything of the kind. I think she would be very foolish to let such an absurd thing make her unhappy—supposing any one should be unkind enough to say it."
"They would say it, and I'd hear of it; and then there'd be trouble."
"But you say you love her; isn't your love strong enough to rise above such things? You think the sacrifice would be hers, but it wouldn't; it would be yours."