She did not answer.
"I'm sick," he muttered. "I—I—think I'm very sick."
"Something has happened, dear," she said. "I'm going to tell you what." She paused—and in the pause felt his body grow tense in a familiar way. For a moment the prospect frightened her. She felt, vaguely, that she was playing with that which was infinitely delicate—which might break in her very hands, and leave her desolate. "You know, dear," she continued, faltering, "we used to be very rich. But we're not, any more." It was a poor lie—she realized that: and was half ashamed. "We're very poor, now," she went on, hurriedly. "A man broke into the bank and stole all your mother's gold and diamonds and lovely dresses. She hasn't anything—any more." She had conceived a vast contempt for the lie; she felt that it was a weak, unpracticed thing—but she knew that it was sufficient: for he had never yet doubted her. "So I don't know what she'll do," she concluded, weakly. "She will have to stop having good times, I guess. She will have to go to work."
He straightened in her lap. "No, no!" he cried, gladly. "I'll work!"
Her impulse was to express her delight in his manliness, her triumphant consciousness of his love—to kiss him, to hug him until he cried out with pain. But she restrained all this—harshly, pitilessly. She had no mercy upon herself.
"I'll work!" he repeated.
"How?" she asked. "You don't know how."
"Teach me."
She laughed—an ironical little laugh: designed to humiliate him. "Why," she exclaimed, "I don't know how to teach you!"
He sighed.