"Do you often get up to the city?"
"Oh, now and then. I only come when I have to. It's too windy and too noisy to suit me. I just came up this morning to see a real-estate firm here about a house they've got in Ripley. I'm going back to-night."
"You're buying a house?" she cried in the tone of a child who sees a toy taken from it. Her anger at her lack of self-control was increased when she saw that he had misinterpreted her feeling.
"Just to rent," he said hastily. "I'm not thinking of—moving. Mother and I are satisfied where we are, and I expect it'll be some time before I get that place paid for. This other house—" It seemed to her unbearable that he should have two houses. But he went on doggedly, determined, she saw, to give no impression of a prosperity that was not his. "I expect you wouldn't think much of it. But there's a big real-estate firm up here that's going to boom Ripley, and I wanted to get in on as much of it as I could. They're buying up half the land in the county, and I had an option on a little piece they wanted, so I traded it in for this house. I figure I can fix it up some and make a good thing renting it pretty soon."
She saw that her momentary envy had been absurd. He might have two houses, but he was only one of the unnumbered customers of a big real-estate firm. At that moment her husband was dealing as an equal with the heads of such a firm. There was, of course, no comparison between the two men, and she made none. The stirring of remembered affection that she felt for Paul registered in her mind only a pensive realization of the decay of everything under the erosion of time.
She felt that she was managing the interview very well, and when she saw Paul resugaring his coffee from time to time, with the same deliberate measuring of two level spoonfuls, she felt a complex gratification. She told herself that she did not want Paul to be still in love with her and unhappy, but there was a pleasure in seeing this evidence that his agitation was greater than hers. Being ashamed of the emotion did not kill it.
He told her, with an attempt to control his pride, that he was no longer with the railroad company. The man who "just about owned Ripley" had given him a better job. He was in charge of the ice-plant and lumber-yard now, and he was getting a hundred and fifty a month. He mentioned the figures diffidently, as one who does not desire to be boastful.
"That's fine!" she said, and thought that they paid nearly half that sum for rent, and that the very clothes she was wearing had cost more than his month's salary. She would have liked him to know these things, so that he might see how wonderful Bert was, though they did not have a house, and the cruelty of even thinking this made her hate herself. "Why, you're doing splendidly," she said. "I'm so glad!"
Paul, though conscientiously modest, agreed with her, and was deeply pleased by her applause. After an evident struggle between two opposing impulses, he began to ask questions about her. She found there was very little to tell him. Yes, she was having a very good time. Yes, she was very well. His admiration of her rosy color threw her into a strangling whirlpool of emotions, from which she rescued herself by the sardonic thought that her technic with rouge had improved since their last meeting. She told him vaguely that business was fine, and that they had a lovely apartment on Bush Street.
There was nothing else to tell about herself, and both of them avoided directly mentioning her husband. She had never more keenly realized the emptiness of her life, except for Bert, than when she saw Paul's mind circling about it in an effort to find something there.