She got up, lit the gas, shutting out the stars, and wrote: “I am coming back to make one more and one last effort. Won’t you?” If he would only try!
Sam met her with the magnanimity of forgiveness, the consciousness of kind forgetting. Her redeemed valuables were all in place. Everything should be the same, in spite of—And she put the back of her hand against his lips!
When he dressed for dinner the salvage of the three balls, the spoils of war, were piled in his bureau drawer.
Still he hoped better for the roses by her plate. She had the maid carry them out, explaining in her absence, “No gifts, please, Sam. Substitutes will not do any longer.”
Sam played with his fork, smiling, with lips only. How shockingly she showed suffering. Separation had made her appearance unfamiliar; he thought the change all recent. He took pains to compliment the immediate improvement in the pastry, to give her the servants’ money unreminded as soon as they were alone.
How characteristic! Judith thought, wearily, letting the bills lie where he laid them.
“That’s one of the things for us to settle, Sam,” she said, in her new freedom and self-respect discarding the familiar little diplomacies by which she was used to soothe, prepare, manage, the lord of the hearth. “I am not going to ask for money in the future, nor depend on what you happen to give.” The manner was a simple statement of fact. “You must make me an allowance through your bookkeeper.”
Sam was lounging through his cigar. “So that’s it? Still?” He smiled confidentially at the smoke, puffing it from his lower lip. “As accurately as I can recollect, my dear, I have told you seven thousand and three times that I am not on a salary, and don’t know from month to month what I will make.”
How unchanged everything was! Her determination stiffened. “But you know what you have made. Base it on the year before. Or have a written statement mailed me every month, and file my signature at the bank.”
Not quite unchanged; for Sam took the cigar from his mouth and turned slowly to look at her. If he had taken her return for capitulation and had met it according to his code, things were not fitting in. “Really, my dear! Really! What next? Evidently I have never done you justice; you have positive genius in the game—of monopoly; first thing, I’ll be begging from you.”