“I know it’s foolish, but I’m afraid she’s going to dig in the cemetery to see if Uncle Ebeneezer is still there. She thinks he’s in the cat.”
For the moment, Harlan thought Dorothy had suddenly lost her reason, then he laughed heartily.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “she won’t do anything of the kind, and, besides, what if she did? It’s a free country, isn’t it?”
“And—there’s another thing, Harlan.” For days she had dreaded to speak of it, but now it could be put off no longer.
“It’s—it’s money,” she went on, unwillingly. “I’m afraid I haven’t managed very well, or else it’s cost so much for everything, but we’re—we’re almost broke, Harlan,” she concluded, bravely, trying to smile.
Harlan put his hands in his pockets and began to walk back and forth. “If I can only finish the book,” he said, at length, “I think we’ll be all right, but I can’t leave it now. There’s only two more chapters to write, and then——”
“And then,” cried Dorothy, her beautiful belief in him transfiguring her face, “then we’ll be rich, won’t we?”
“I am already rich,” returned Harlan, “when you have such faith in me as that.”
For a moment the shimmering veil of estrangement which so long had hung between them, seemed to part, and reveal soul to soul. As swiftly the mood changed and Dorothy felt it first, like a chill mist in the air. Neither dreamed that with the writing of the first paragraph in the book, the spell had claimed one of them for ever—that cobweb after cobweb, of gossamer fineness, should make a fabric never to be broken; that on one side of it should stand a man who had exchanged his dreams for realities and his realities for dreams, and on the other, a woman, blindly hurt, eternally straining to see beyond the veil.
“What can we do?” asked Harlan, unwontedly practical for the nonce.