"If we have luck," she added.
"No--if we work--and we shall. Luck is a stone which envy flings at
success."
"Then you don't think you have been lucky?"
"Indeed I do not."
"Not even," she smiled, drawing herself up.
"Not even--" he said with a faint, sad answering smile. "If you only knew
how hard I worked preparing myself to be able to get you when you came; if
you only, only knew how life made me pay, pay, pay; if you only knew--"
"Go on," she said, coming closer to him.
He sighed--not for the reason of sentiment which she fancied, though he put
his arms around her. "How willingly I paid," he evaded.
He went to his desk and she stood looking at him. There was still the charm
of youth, even freshness, in her beauty--and she was not unconscious of the
fact.
And he--he was handsome, distinguished looking and certainly did not
suggest age or the approach of age; but in his hair, so grey at the
temples, in the stern, rather haughty lines of his features, in the
weariness of his eyes, there was not a vestige of youth. "How he has worked
for me and for his ideals," she thought, sadly yet proudly. "Ah, he is
indeed a great man, and _my_ husband!" And she bent over him and
kissed him on an impulse to a kind of tenderness which was now so strange
to her that it made her feel shy.
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