“And you took the money?”
“No, I am to have it to-morrow. I am going to meet him at his club.”
“I wish, Merton, that you could do without this fifty pounds,” she said after a while. “I see no prospect of repaying it, there is so little coming in. And I seem unable to help you in the least—my last manuscript came back to-day, declined like the others. I am afraid that this borrowing will do us more harm than good. It is the way to lose your friends, I think, and the friendship of a man in Mr. Eden's position should be worth more to you than fifty pounds, even looking at the matter in a purely interested way.”
“You need not fear, Connie. Besides, even if you are right in what you say, I should really prefer to have this little help than Eden's friendship. You see he is a mere butterfly, without any interest in things of the mind, and it is not likely that he will be very much to us in our new life, which will be among intellectual and artistic people, I hope.”
“With so poor an opinion of him I can't imagine how you can take his money and lay yourself under so great an obligation.”
“Pooh, Connie, the obligation will be very light indeed. In three or four months the money will be repaid, and he will think as little about it as he does of inviting me to lunch or giving me a good cigar. I shall always be friendly with him, and invite him sometimes to see us when we are comfortably established; but he is not a man I should ever wish to grapple to my breast with hooks of steel. And so you see, wifie dear, you have been making yourself unhappy without sufficient cause. And now won't you kiss and forgive me, and acknowledge that I am not so black as your imagination painted me?”
She kissed him freely, and accepted as simple truth the explanation he had given of his excited condition during the evening; nevertheless, she was not quite happy in her mind. The return of that last manuscript—a long article which had cost her much pains to write, and about which she had been very hopeful—had made her sore, and he had paid no attention to what she had said about it, and the words of sympathy and encouragement she had looked for had not been spoken. Then it had jarred on her mind to hear her husband talk so disparagingly of the friend from whom he was borrowing money. She had herself formed a better opinion of Mr. Eden's character and capabilities. And about the borrowing, what he had said had not altered her mind; but it was her way whenever she disagreed with her husband to reason and even plead with him, and if she then found, as she generally did, that he still adhered to his own view, to yield the point and say no more about it.