"Why!... When we've never even had a real talk about it before!... I told you once that you were more generous than--"
"No, I'm never generous enough. That's my trouble, among others.... But if you think that it's a nice and happy thing for us to be putting up this building, I want you please always to remember ... that you've done it all yourself."
There was a tense silence, out of which his voice spoke, no longer with any trace of humor.
"Don't be polite.... I couldn't quite stand it. Do you mean that?"
"It's all a failure if you won't believe that I do."
"Then I do believe it."
This time the silence ran somewhat longer, and again it was V.V.'s voice, greatly stirred, that broke it.
"I don't understand, but I do believe it.... And it makes me pretty proud. By George, pretty proud!... Why--I've talked a lot--but it's the first thing I've ever accomplished! The first thing...."
His voice showed that his mind had swept away from her, over spaces; and Cally raised her eyes and looked at him. He sat gazing wide-eyed into the dull-green glow of her lamp, on his face a curious and moving look; a look humbled yet exalted, gloriously wondering, and to her the wistfullest thing she had ever seen in her life. He, who had given away his patrimony, who was giving away his life every day with a will, thought that this was the first thing....
All that was sweetest in the girl, all that was maternal and understanding, rose fiercely within her, stormed her with a desire to mother this man, to protect him from his own royal yet somehow infinitely sad self-denials. For this moment she felt far stronger than he. His hand, with the pencil in it, lay on the table close by her, and Cally closed her slim fingers over it with a firm clasp.