In buying the food she contributed more toward the cost than he, for in the matter of money he was strangely unmindful. Frequently he forgot his weekly contribution altogether, and returned home with some trifle of china or an old print by way of alternative. On these occasions it did not occur to him to question how meals still appeared upon his table, and Eve would not have told him for the world how hard it had been that this should be so.
Increasingly her thoughts centred on his welfare, and her own personality took second place. Even her ambitions—and they had been many and glorious—became merged in the task of helping him to success.
He had not taken into consideration the possibility that she, too, was a climber at heart, and had set her sails for the port where the dreams come true. He was quite offended when one day she spoke of herself.
“But can you act?” he staccatoed.
“One day I shall,” she answered. “One day I shall feel I know so much more than all the others—then I shall act, and people will sit up and say so.”
“H’m.”
“You think it unlikely?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He fidgeted with a cup on the mantelshelf. “It seemed you were echoing those things which I say to myself.”
“We have thoughts in common.”
He shook his head irritably.