“I must say that you don’t seem to want money so much for yourself,” said Gay, laughing. “You might get a studio, and you might go abroad. I’ll tell you what I think,” finished Gay, “you’d like money principally because, when a man’s pictures sell, it’s proof that he is succeeding in his profession!”
“Well, I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right, Gay,” David said, surprised at the shrewdness of the analysis.
“Because, if you and Sylvia——” the girl was beginning, animatedly. She stopped. Her face was crimson. “Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to know that,” she stammered, smiling.
“Not much to know,” David said, also a little red. “It—it’s indefinite until Sylvia chooses to have it definite,” he added. And then, with what was suddenly a rough, almost an angry manner, for David, he went on: “But what were you going to say, Gay? Did you mean that if Sylvia and I were married I would be rich?”
“Nothing quite so crude, David!” she answered, readily, with an apologetic smile. “I was contrasting the pleasure you would get from a—well, from a really sensational success with your exhibition,” Gay went on, feeling for words, “to the pleasure any amount of money just put into your hand would give you! You and Sylvia can do anything you like, I suppose, but I know it won’t make you feel like working any less!”
It was said with her innocent, sisterly smile, and with her usual unspoiled earnest interest, but David felt oddly uncomfortable whenever he thought of it throughout the day. A dozen times he wondered exactly what the situation would be if Sylvia were in—well, in Gay’s position, looking to her husband for everything.
He could not be more fond of her, he was glad to think. Indeed, David thought, Sylvia’s character would probably come out in far finer colours under these circumstances than it was apt to do as it was. To receive all that Sylvia was to receive upon coming of age, to be so clever, so beautiful, and so admired, was sure to prove more or less upsetting. As for the rest, he wished heartily that it had been his good fortune to fall in love with a woman who had not a penny!
Not that Sylvia would be anything but charming in her attitude to his income and her own. She would glide over any conceivable awkwardness with her own native fineness. She would ask—he knew exactly how prettily—“David, should I buy a new fur coat, do you think? David, would another maid be an awful extravagance?” There would never be a word or a hint to remind him that after all the safety-deposit box, and the check books, and indeed the very roof over their heads, were hers.
It was not that that he feared. But he did fear her quite natural opinion that money was extremely important. It was important to her. It was important to almost everyone. But it was not important to David.
If their friends would think him fortunate in winning so clever and beautiful and charming a wife, well and good. But he knew that they would go on to the consideration of her wealth, if indeed many of them did not actually commence there. “Pretty comfortable for him, she has scads of money!” the world would say, and Sylvia—unfortunately!—could hardly help having her own convictions upon that score, too.