“Oh, no, I'm not.”
“You do satisfy me,” I insisted. “It isn't that at all. But I think, perhaps, it would be wiser to go back. It's rather a crucial time with me, now that Mr. Watling's in Washington. I've just arrived at a position where I shall be able to make a good deal of money, and later on—”
“It isn't the money, Hugh,” she cried, with a vehemence which struck me as a little odd. “I sometimes think we'd be a great deal happier without—without all you are going to make.”
I laughed.
“Well, I haven't made it yet.”
She possessed the frugality of the Hutchinses. And some times my lavishness had frightened her, as when we had taken the suite of rooms we now occupied.
“Are you sure you can afford them, Hugh?” she had asked when we first surveyed them.
I began married life, and carried it on without giving her any conception of the state of my finances. She had an allowance from the first.
As the steamer slipped westward my spirits rose, to reach a climax of exhilaration when I saw the towers of New York rise gleaming like huge stalagmites in the early winter sun. Maude likened them more happily—to gigantic ivory chessmen. Well, New York was America's chessboard, and the Great Players had already begun to make moves that astonished the world. As we sat at breakfast in a Fifth Avenue hotel I ran my eye eagerly over the stock-market reports and the financial news, and rallied Maude for a lack of spirits.
“Aren't you glad to be home?” I asked her, as we sat in a hansom.