"But if you can do the work? Mrs. Shane said——"
"Oh, Shane will trust me; he's learned. What hurts is to have worked up a scheme to the point where it is necessary to have outside capital, and then have one of the outsiders stick out for a certificated engineer. That's what comes of my uncle's notion that a man should 'pick up' his professional training." There was the core of that old bitterness rankling in him still; he could not yield himself quite to consolation.
"But you have got on, Helmeth, you got here." What "here" meant to me exactly, was more than my lover, more than the pleasant room behind us, the obsequious servitors, more even than the sleek, silvered river and the towered banks that took on shapes of romance under the London gray. There was something in the word to me of fulfilment, the knowledge of things done, the certainty of an unassailed capacity for doing. We were sitting with the broad window flung open, the top of a lime tree tapping the sill of it with soft shouldering touches, as of some wild creature against its mate, creaking a little in somnolent content. I put out my hand to touch his knee—oh, as I might have done it if the "here" had been the point toward which we had travelled together all these years. He laughed then as he often did when I touched him, a man's short full laugh of repletion. He thrust out his knee quite frankly till it touched mine, and closed his hand over my fingers; he returned to what had been in the air the previous moment with an effort. The suspicion that it was an effort, was all I had to prepare me for what was about to leap upon me.
"Oh, I've pulled through, I've pulled through. But I'm not where I might have been. And I'm not rich, Olivia. Not what is called rich."
"Is being called rich one of the things that goes with—what was it you called yourself—a promoting engineer?"
"It goes with it if you are any good at it. Not that I care about money except for what it stands for ... and then there are the girls."
"You have—girls." It struck me as absurd that I hadn't thought of it until that moment.
"I thought Mrs. Shane would have told you. I have two. It isn't going to make any difference with you, Olivia?"
"Ah, what difference should it make!" I was apprised within me by the haste I made to cover my consternation, that there was more difference in it than my words allowed. "Children of yours?" I said. "So much more of you for me to love." The apprehension was whelmed in the possessing movement with which he drew me to his breast.