"Do you remember some of those first things you did? The little country club at Oak Hills? I was awfully happy when you showed me that," she said softly, irrelevantly. "Somehow I know you could do that again and better things, too, if—if you could forget the money and all that. Real, honest work! You could be the artist I know you are, the maker of honest, fine buildings!"
In the enthusiasm of her face he read dimly once more the long-past dream of his youth, the talk of young men in the studios, the hours by her side on the steamer, when they had come together in the imperfect attraction of sex. It was but the flicker of a distant light, however; he had learned the lesson of the city too well.
"That sounds very well. But it isn't practical. If you want to do big work, you have to be your own master, and not work for some one else! And art, especially architecture, lives on the luxury of the rich, whom you seem to despise!"
"What does it matter whose name goes on the plans? It's the work that makes it that counts, and no one can have that but the one who does it."
"Now, you're talking poetry, Nell, not sense!" he exclaimed good-naturedly, getting up from the lounge and walking to and fro. "This world doesn't run on those lines, and you and I aren't going to make it over, either. You're talking like a romantic girl!"
"There isn't much else of the girl left in me!" she smiled wistfully back to him.
"Just look at it practically. If I go out of business for myself, I couldn't earn more than two hundred a month working for some firm. That's as much as Wright ever pays his best men. What would that be to live on? For you and me and the boys?"
"We could make it do. There are many others who have less."
"Next you will want to take in washing."
"I had rather do the cooking, when it comes to that," she flashed back.