“Yes,” he said, “the most worth-while thing in life is to feel you are accomplishing something—doing your work well and getting proportionate returns.”
The tone touched her. “Poor old Guy!” so generously congratulatory of her flaunted advantages. How stupid she was! Poor Guy! her pretty creed scattered at a breath like a dead dandelion-ball. Envy she had disposed of, but what about pity? What had he to make up? “The idea of my talking of happiness, with you caged here!”
“Perhaps that was the point of it all,” he said, “to give you your chance.”
“That would be a beautifully humble thing for me to think, now wouldn't it?” Yet she had once complained that the point of it all was to interfere with her. “And so sweetly generous. Your chance being—?”
“To serve as a means of grace to you?” He smiled. “I am glad to be of some use—and honored to be of that one!” he hurried to add, elaborately humorous.
But what she was noticing was the flagging effort of his vivacity. Her half-submerged first impression of him was coming to the surface: he did look unusually haggard. “You haven't been good while I was away. Now don't tell stories. Don't I know you? No more storms, Guy!” she warned.
His eye evaded hers. “I am seriously questioning whether you ought to make this change. All your friends are here.”
“Oh, as to that! There might be advantages in working among strangers. Mrs. Grey fairly puts herself out to let me understand that she is a friend in need!” She reined herself up, recollecting, but too late. “Oh, Guy, don't mind so for me. Why, the South is full of women doing what I am, only so many of them are doing it—without—the Guys who never came back!”
“Lucky dogs!” subterraneously. Then, seeing her apprehensive of a second flare-up of that volcanic fire: “So gentlemanly of them, too, Bibi. How can those few years of love be worth a life of this to you?”
“Those few years? why, Guy! of love? Is that how you feel?” Her eyes filled; her whole face quivered. “Oh, Guy—be willing for my sake. I never knew what love could mean until lately.”