He
had dipped into his slender capital, but of this she had not even a
suspicion...he had made some airy remark about celebrating a "good
deal"...no wonder...he had her too well bluffed.
For an instant he contemplated a plain and manly statement of fact. But he
did not have the courage. Anything rather than that she should curl that
short aristocratic upper lip of hers, stare at him with wide astonished
eyes that saw him a failure, even if a temporary one. He set his teeth and
vowed to go through with it, to make good. This thousand would last several
months, even if he made no more than his expenses meanwhile.
He shrugged his shoulders and lit another cigar. The first had died a
lingering and malodorous death.
"Have your own way," he said coldly. "I only wished to keep you young and
carefree. If you choose to bother with bills and investments it is your own
look-out."
"Thank you, Morty dear."
She felt that it would be an act of wifely self-abnegation to defer the
announcement of her interest in socialism and Mr. Kirkpatrick. Aileen and
Sibyl had hailed her plan as even more exciting than the study of economics
with an exceedingly good-looking young professor (who had been tutoring
in Burlingame), and she had already dispatched a note to him whom Aileen
disreputably called her Fillmore Street mash.
CHAPTER IX
I
Kirkpatrick sat before a crescent composed of Mrs.
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