"Venetia!"
"What's the harm in my saying what all the world that knows us is saying? It's been a ten years' piece of gossip. I feel sorry for her, too. It must be rough to get along in life and see you have muckered your game.... Do you know, I am terribly tempted to let her have the money, all of it, and skip out myself. Perhaps some of these days you'll read a little paragraph in the morning paper,—'Mysterious Disappearance of a Well-known Young Society Woman.' Wouldn't that be original? Just to drop out of everything and take to the road!"
"What would you do?"
"Anything, everything—make a living. Don't you think I could do that?" She embroidered this theme fancifully for a time and then lapsed into silence. Finally she burst forth again: "Good Lord, why can't we get hold of life before it's too late? It's going on all around us,—big, and rich, and full of blood. And folks like you and me sit on the bank, eating a picnic lunch."
"Perhaps," mused Helen, "it would be different if one had to earn the lunch."
"Who knows? Will you try it? Will you cut loose from Jackie?"
A rather sad smile crossed the older woman's face, and Venetia seizing her arm impulsively gave it a little squeeze. Just then Coburn strolled into the room with the boys, whom he had found in the corridor, and nodding abruptly toward Helen, stood before the plans, studying them with his sharp, black eyes. His little ironical smile hung on his parted lips. Turning to Venetia, he said good-humoredly:—
"Thinks he's doing something, don't he, Venetia?"
Helen rose and called the boys.
"A building is just four walls and a roof to me," he continued, addressing Helen. "But Jack Hart seems to have got what he wanted—that's the chief thing, ain't it?"