"The trust will take care of them," Hamilton declared mechanically, without lifting his face from his hands.
"You know how the trust will take care of them," Cicily retorted, with a touch of bitterness. "It will pay them a starvation wage—no more!"
"But you're jealous of business!" Hamilton objected, raising his head to gaze curiously at this most paradoxical person. "And, now, you are urging me to keep at it. I don't understand."
Cicily laughed aloud, in genuine enjoyment. Her eyes were alight with the fires of victory.
"I used to be jealous of it," she admitted, joyously. "I'm not any longer—because I've beaten it. Your offer just now proves that, doesn't it?... But, now that I have won a triumph over my old rival, why, we've got to go forward."
"Together?" There was a tender, half-fearful doubt in the husband's voice as he asked the question that meant so much to him, for he loved this variable wife of his in this moment more than he had ever dreamed that he could love a woman.
The wife's head drooped shyly, and her face flamed. Her word came very softly spoken, but it rang a peal of happiness in the heart of her husband.
"Yes."
The man rose from his chair, and went to his wife's side, where he stooped, and took her face in his hands, and raised it until he could look deep into the eyes of gold.