“But I haven’t lost my nerve!” he denied warmly.
“Oh, yes, you have,” she contradicted, “or you wouldn’t admit that you’re a failure, and you wouldn’t talk about money that way. Money doesn’t cut much ice as long as you’ve got nerve.”
“That’s all right from your view,” said he pettishly. “But you’ve had easy going of it, out of college into a nice home, with a lot of those pink-faced chaps to ride you around in their automobiles, and opera and plays and horse-shows and all that stuff.”
“Perhaps,” she admitted, a soft sadness in her voice. “But wait until you’ve seen somebody drunk with the passion of too much money and crazy with the hunger for more; wait until you’ve seen a man’s soul grow black from hugging it to his heart, and his conscience atrophy and his manhood wither. And then when it rises up and crushes him, and all that are his with it––”
He looked at her curiously, waiting for her to round it out with a personal citation. But she said no more.
“That’s why you’re here, hoping like the rest of us to draw Number One?”
“Any number up to six hundred will do for me,” she laughed, sitting erect once more and seeming to shake her bitter mood off as she spoke.
“And what will you do with it? Sell out as soon as the law allows?” 39
“I’ll live on it,” dreamily, as if giving words to an old vision which she had warmed in her heart. “I’ll stay there and work through the hope of summer and the bleakness of winter, and make a home. I’ll smooth the wild land and plant trees and green meadows, and roses by the door, and we’ll stay there and it will be–home!”
“Yes,” he nodded, understanding the feeling better than she knew. “You and mother; you want it just that way.”