"They leave little time for your mistress," she rejoined meaningly.
"Who is my mistress?"
"Well, I am not greatly your wife," she replied. "I have the dregs of
your life. I help you--I am allowed to help you--so little, to share so
little in the things that matter to you."
"Now, that's imagination and misunderstanding," he rejoined. "It has
helped immensely your being such a figure in society, and entertaining so
much, and being so popular, at any rate until very lately."
"I do not misunderstand," she answered gravely. "I do not share your real
life. I do not help you where your brain works, in the plans and purposes
and hopes that lie behind all that you do--oh, yes, I know your ambitions
and what positions you are aiming for; but there is something more than
that. There is the object of it all, the pulse of it, the machinery down,
down deep in your being that drives it all. Oh, I am not a child! I have
some intellect, and I want--I want that we should work it out together."
In spite of all that had come and gone, in spite of the dead mother's
words and all her own convictions, seeing trouble coming upon him, she
wanted to make one last effort for what might save their lives--her
life--from shipwreck in the end.
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