“I didn't have a home—I had a place where I ate and slept. I didn't have a wife—I had an acquaintance who kept house for me. I had children—at school and college. I didn't have real hobbies—I hadn't had time for them. And I was forty-nine. All I could do was go on making money till I died.
“Well, you changed that,” his voice shook a little.
“You came and I saw and knew and took you. And I'm not sorry. Because you've made me alive again. And I'm going to be alive now till I die.
“Funny—I was never so anxious about anything happening as I have been about—our approaching mutual disappearance. Especially the last six months when I've been planning. But now that's settled.
“Mary will have more than enough and the children are grown. They won't know—I still have brains enough to settle that and money will do nearly everything. It'll be a nine days' wonder. 'Sudden Disappearance of Prominent Financier—Foul Play Suspected' and that'll be all.
“As for the Commercial—I haven't come to my age without finding out that nobody in the world is indispensable. If a taxi ran over me tomorrow they'd have to do without me—and Harris and the young men can handle things.
“But you know where there'll be an elderly gentleman retired from business with a country house and a garden he can putter around in all his worst clothes. And a wife that reads Dickens to him in the evening—oh yes, Rose, we'll take Dickens along. And he'll be pretty contented as things go—that retired old gentleman.”
The darkness had passed from his eyes—he was smiling now.
“Be nice—eh Rose?”
He took her hand—the warm touch was still strong, still reassuring. Only the eyes that he was not looking at now seemed singularly unsure, as if they had seen something they had pondered over lightly, as a mere possibility, years ago, take on sudden impatient body and demand to be heard.