'Why, he’s not good enough for Victoria.'
'Not good enough? Why, what’s the matter with Jim? I never heard a word against him and I’ve known him ever since he was a little shaver. He’s steady as can be, and a hard worker.'
'I know all that. I wasn’t thinking about such things. I was thinking about—oh, about—other things.'
'Other things? Well, what on earth is the matter with the other things? Forman’s place is as good as any hereabouts, and it’s clear, and only three children to be divided among. There’s money in the bank, too, I’ll bet.'
'But Victoria is so young, Jake. Why, she’s just a girl!'
'She’s old as you was, when we got married, Em.'
He went into the kitchen for another drink of water. When he came through the room, he bent over to pick up his shoes.
'Say, Em,' he said, 'you surely don’t mean what you’ve been saying, do you, about Jim not being good enough for Vic? 'Cause it ain’t likely that she’ll ever get another chance as good.'
She did not answer. The man looking at her, the man who had lived with her for more than twenty years, did not know that a sudden rage against life was in her heart. He did not know that the lost dreams of her youth were crying out in her against the treachery of life. He did not know that the bandage which the years had mercifully bound across her eyes had fallen away, and that she was seeing the everlasting tragedy of the conflict between dreams and life. He did not know that, in that moment, she was facing the supreme sorrow of motherhood in the knowledge that the beloved child cannot be spared the disillusions of the years. He only knew that she was worried.
'Don’t you be giving Vic any of your queer notions,' he said, in a voice which was almost harsh.