“Very likely.”
“I can’t help feeling that the living have rights, too,” she began dubiously. “If they would let me alone I could be sorry in my own way, but I don’t see why I have to make a parade of grief. It seems to—to cheapen one’s feelings, you know.”
He nodded. “Just as if you had to measure your friendship for the dead with a yardstick of Mother Grundy. It’s a hideous imposition laid on us by custom, one of Ibsen’s ghosts.”
“It’s so good to hear you say that. And do you think I may begin to be happy again?”
“I think it would be allowable to start with one smile a day, say, and gradually increase the dose,” he jested. “In the course of a week, if it seems to agree with you, try a laugh.”
She made the experiment without waiting the week, amused at his whimsical way of putting it. Nevertheless, the sound of her own laughter gave her a little shock.
“You came on business, I suppose?” she said presently.
“Yes. I came to raise a million dollars for some improvements I want to make.”
“Let me lend it to you,” she proposed eagerly.
“That would be a good one. I’m going to use it to fight the Consolidated. Since you are now its chief stockholder you would be letting me have money with which to fight you.”