Her evidence of feeling both startled and hurt him. He had supposed that all her years of patient waiting had covered a mind serenely satisfied with the present through a belief in the future. He looked at her for a few moments in surprise. “I am very sorry, Edith,” he began haltingly. “I, too, feel the need of those things, but I do not allow the lack of them to spoil my life. I have borne my trials and done my duty as best I could, and I expect you to do the same. If we have not money, and all the pleasures and luxuries it brings, we at least have health and our daily bread, and above all, our little boy. We ought to be very thankful.”
“Do you suppose for a moment that I do not appreciate Bobbie? He is the only thing that keeps me here.”
The troubled look on Donald’s face grew deeper as he answered her, and with it came an expression of alarm. He had never doubted Edith’s love for him, and her words were a great shock.
“The only thing that keeps you here!” he cried. “Is your love for me of no importance to you?”
Edith surveyed the plain, poorly furnished little room with ill-concealed dislike. “This sort of thing,” she said bitterly, “doesn’t offer much for love to feed upon.”
“Edith! You surely do not realize what you are saying. To hear you talk, anyone might suppose we were on the point of going to the poorhouse.”
“It couldn’t be worse. I’m tired of it, and I can’t help saying so. I suppose you will think me very ungrateful, but I can’t help it. We never have any pleasures, any happiness, any real enjoyment. It’s nothing but mere existence.”
“I don’t agree with you. I am not doing so badly. We are both of us young. In a few years I hope to be comparatively well off, and then things will be very different. I am working and striving for you every hour of the day. Do you think I would do it, if I did not feel that you love me—that you believed in me?”
He went over to her, and took her hand in his. “What has upset you so, to-night, dear? Is there anything you particularly want—anything that I could do for you? Tell me—if there is, you know I will do everything in my power to gratify you.”
“No—nothing that you could do.” She seemed unconscious of the pain she was giving him.