“Much rest I’d get with that mob in there.”
The woman flashed back at him with a white heat,
“You have your men’s dinners and your wine parties—and you grudge me a little pleasure like this! It’s like you; it’s like—” For very shame’s sake, the guests were hurriedly talking to cover the sounds of strife.
“Harrington’s trip evidently hasn’t done him much good,” said Nichols to Atterbury. “I doubt his success. He has too many large schemes on hand; what he makes in one way he uses to float something else.”
“It’s possible,” said Atterbury thoughtfully.
“It doesn’t do to take things like that; if you lose your grip you can’t get on.”
“That’s what I’m finding out now. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Nichols, that I’m in a hole. But you have no experience in that way; your business is secure.”
The two men had drawn to one side and were talking in low and confidential tones.
“Is it? I tell you, Atterbury, the time I went through five years ago was awful, simply awful. No, I never said a word to a soul here; nobody even suspected. There was one time when I thought I’d have to send Sue and the babies home to her father, and light out for the Klondike.”
“But you didn’t,” said Atterbury, his own pulse leaping to the courage of the other man with a sudden kinship.