She hesitated, uncertain what to think, and then she asked searchingly:—
"Why aren't they going to do anything? What does it mean?"
"Oh, I guess the others have brought Pemberton to his senses," he replied evasively. "At any rate, it's blown over, as I told you it would."
"No, Francis! It isn't made right yet. You would be different if it were. Somehow, from the beginning, when first there was talk of this school, it has all been wrong. I hate it! I hate it! And the trouble goes back of that, too. It starts from the very beginning, when we were married, and began to live together. We have always done as the others do all around us, and it is all wrong. I see it now. We can never go on again in the same way—"
"What way? I don't understand you in the least," he interrupted.
"Why, just earning and spending money, trying to get more and more, trying to get things. It's spoiled your work; it's spoiled you; and I have been blind and weak to let us drift on like the others, getting and spending, struggling to get ahead, until it has come to this, to this,—something dreadful that you will not tell me,—something base that you have done to make money. Oh, how low and mean it is! How mean it makes men and women!"
"That's life," he retorted neatly.
"No, no, never! That wasn't what you and I thought before we married. I wish you were a clerk, a laborer, a farm-hand,—anything, so that we could be honest, and think of something besides making money. Let us begin again, from the very beginning, and live like the common people from day to day—live for your work, for the thing you do. Then we should be happy. Never this way, not if you make millions, millions!"
"Well, I can't see why you are set on going away," the architect answered, content to see her mind turn from the practical question.
"Tell me!" she exclaimed passionately. "Tell me! Is it all right with that building? With that contractor? Are you honest? Are you an honest man? Tell me, and I will believe you."