It would be all gay and bright with them for a few brief weeks, or perhaps for a few months; then their sky would change, for Iris was not a girl to endure poverty for love's sake. She wanted the luxuries of life—these he could not give her; and there would be reproaches from the lips that now had only smiles for him.
She would want diamonds and silks, and all the other feminine extravagances so dear to the hearts of other women, and he was only a struggling doctor, who would have to fight a hand-to-hand battle with grim poverty. And sitting there in the arm-chair, before the glowing grate, where he had flung himself, he pictured a life of poverty that would spread out before him if he defied the world for love's sake.
A dingy office; a worn coat, and trousers shiny at the knees; a necktie with a ragged edge; an unkempt beard, a last season's hat, and hunger gnawing at his vitals.
The picture filled him with the most abject horror.
He was stylish and fastidious to a fault. He loved Iris; but did he not equally love his own ease? He could barely tolerate Dorothy, the poor, tender, plain little creature who lavished a world of love upon him; but he swallowed the bitter draught of having to endure her by always remembering that she was heiress, in all probability, to a cool million of money, and money had been his idol all his life long. He could not exist without it.
He was not one of the kind who could face the world manfully and snatch from it its treasures by the sweat of his brow. No, he could not give up this dream of wealth that was almost as much as life to him.
In the very midst of his reverie a light step crossed the library, but he did not hear it. It was Dorothy.
She stole up quietly and knelt on the hassock beside his chair.
"What were you thinking of, Harry?" she said.
He was equal to the occasion.