"And why didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you? Nonsense!" The man's tone was expressive of extreme annoyance.
"But I'm your partner," Cicily persisted bravely, although her heart sank under the rebuff. "You yourself said that I was."
"Well, and so you are, since you want it so," Hamilton admitted; "and you're attending to your end, aren't you?"
"Yes, the little end," Cicily agreed, disparagingly.
At that, Hamilton was plainly exasperated.
"What end did you expect?" he demanded. "I tell you, Cicily," he continued, in the tone of one arguing with labored patience to convince a child of some truism, "that business is too big, too serious, too strong for a woman like you, my dear."
"Yes, that's just the fear that grips my heart sometimes, Charles," the wife admitted. With an ingenuity characteristic of her active intelligence, she had perceived a method whereby to twist his words to her own purpose. "Look here!" she went on in a caressing voice, utterly unlike the emphatic one in which she had spoken hitherto. "Do you for a moment imagine that I really like business? Well, then, I don't—not a little bit! For that matter, hardly any woman does, I fancy. As to myself, Charles, I'm afraid of it—that's the whole truth. I'm only in it to watch it—and you!"
The change in her manner had immediate effect on the husband. Again, he was surveying her with eyes in which admiration shone. For the ten-thousandth time, he was reveling in the beauty of that oval contour, in the tender curves of the scarlet lips.... But he forgot to voice his thoughts. Indeed, what need? He had told her so many times already!