"Well, if I have to choose between it and you giving up altogether... Now, for your own sake, Richard, don't go and do anything rash. If once you sell off and leave Ballarat, you can never come back. And then, if you regret it, where will you be? That's why I say don't hurry to decide. Sleep over it. Or let us consult somebody—John perhaps—"
"No you don't, madam, no you don't!" cried Richard with a grim dash of humour. "You had me once ... crippled me ... handcuffed me—you and your John between you! It shan't happen again."
"I crippled you? I, Richard! Why, never in my life have I done anything but what I thought was for your good. I've always put you first." And Mary's eyes filled with tears.
"Yes, where it's a question of one's material welfare you haven't your equal—I admit that. But the other side of me needs coddling too—yes, and sympathy. But it can whistle for such a thing as far as you're concerned."
Mary sighed. "I think you don't realise, dear, how difficult it sometimes is to understand you ... or to make out what you really do want," she said slowly.
Her tone struck at his heart. "Indeed and I do!" he cried contritely. "I'm a born old grumbler, mavourneen, I know—contrariness in person! But in this case ... come, love, do try to grasp what I'm after; it means so much to me." And he held out his hand to her, to beseech her.
Unhesitatingly she laid hers in it. "I am trying, Richard, though you mayn't believe it. I always do. And even if I sometimes can't manage it—well, you know, dear, you generally get your own way in the end. Think of the house. I'm still not clear why you altered it. I liked it much better as it was. But I didn't make any fuss, did I?—though I should have, if I'd thought we were only to occupy it for a single year after. —Still, that was a trifle compared with what you want to do now. Though I lived to a hundred I should never be able to approve of this. And you don't know how hard it is to consent to a thing one disapproves of. You couldn't do it yourself. Oh, what WAS the use, Richard, of toiling as you have, if now, just when you can afford to charge higher fees and the practice is beginning to bring in money—"
Mahony let her hand drop, even giving it a slight push from him, and turned to pace the floor anew. "Oh, money, money, money! I'm sick of the very sound of the word. But you talk as if nothing else mattered. Can't you for once, wife, see through the letter of the thing to the spirit behind? I admit the practice HAS brought in a tidy income of late; but as for the rest of the splendours, they exist, my dear, only in your imagination. If you ask me, I say I lead a dog's life—why, even a navvy works only for a fixed number of hours per diem! My days have neither beginning nor end. Look at yesterday! Out in the blazing sun from morning till night—I didn't get back from the second round till nine. At ten a confinement that keeps me up till three. From three till dawn I toss and turn, far too weary to sleep. By the time six o'clock struck—you of course were slumbering sweetly—I was in hell with tic. At seven I could stand it no longer and got up for the chloroform bottle: an hour's rest at any price—else how face the crowd in the waiting-room? And you call that splendour?—luxurious ease? If so, my dear, words have not the same meaning any more for you and me."
Mary did not point out that she had said nothing of the kind, or that he had set up an extreme case as typical. She tightened her lips; her big eyes were very solemn.
"And it's not the work alone," Richard was declaring, "it's the place, wife—the people. I'm done with 'em, Mary—utterly done! Upon my word, if I thought I had to go on living among them even for another twelvemonth ..."