“What sort of thing, Virginia?”
“Politics.” She paused and smiled at him a little, her color rising. “I thought you were a kind of poet.”
“You’re thinking of Leigh; he’s our infant genius. I’m only a stodgy lawyer.”
Daniel leaned back in his chair, thinking. His eyes, traveling over Virginia’s bright head, rested suddenly on a little portrait of a baby boy that hung above her piano in an oval frame. He recognized it with a grim tightening of the lips. It was an old picture of William at the tender age of three. His mother had given it to Virginia when she thought Virginia was to be William’s wife. Doubtless it was an awkward thing to give back, and perhaps—Daniel did not finish the thought.
“I’m going into politics if I can,” he said dryly. “I’ve got to have some interest, Virginia. A cripple can’t sit still and think about being a cripple.”
“I wish you wouldn’t dwell so much on that,” she rejoined quickly. “You think too much of it.”
“But I don’t speak of it often,” he replied bitterly. “I try to hold my tongue.”
“You scarcely ever speak of it, Daniel,” she assured him gently. “I’m glad you spoke of it to me, though. I take it as a compliment.”
“Why?”
He spoke sharply, his brows down. Virginia gave him a clear, sweet look that made him wince with misery—though she did not know it.