ahead.  He was speaking of what this would mean to them here.  He knew how hard it had been for her and how pluckily she had come through without ever asking for anything.  But all that was over now.  He had made money!  What was the matter?  She heard it all in fragments, topsy turvy.  What was wrong?  “Here is a Joe I’ve never known!” Still staring up into his eyes, she saw their strange exultant light; the excitement in his husky voice struck into her sensitive ear and jarred; and she nearly shrank from the clutch of his hand.  She lay wondering why she was not glad, till suddenly she saw in his face his sharp disappointment at the way she was taking his news.  With a pang of alarm she roused herself and said: 

“Oh, Joe, it’s too wonderful!  It’s so sudden it strikes me all of a heap!” And she laughed unsteadily, seized his hand and kissed it, talking rapidly, her eyes glistening all the while with foolish tears.  Fiercely then she asked herself, “Why can’t you enter in and be gay?” But though she was doing better now and had him talking as before, again and again she felt he was thinking how different Amy would have been—­how in an instant, laughing and crying, she would have thrown herself into his arms!

Yes, indeed, a Joe she had never known, shaped and moulded by the wife who had had him in those early years when a woman can do so much with a man, can do what sets him in a groove in work and living, tastes, ideals.  “And I thought I had done so much!” But Amy’s hand had still been there; he had been her husband, all the time!

It was a relief to have him gone.  Alone she could think more clearly.  “What are you so frightened about?  Of being rich, you little fool?” No, she had always wanted that, money enough to forget it existed, money to open all the doors.  “But this money is coming too soon!  I’m not ready.  I’m too young!  And he’ll expect so much of me now.  There’ll be no excuse for holding back, for going slow till I find what I want.  He’ll expect me to find friends at once!  But where shall I find them all of a sudden?  It isn’t as though we were millionaires, really big ones, all in a minute.  The newspapers won’t be very excited; the town will take it quite calmly, quite!  And for the life of me I don’t see any friends rushing at us!  And yet he’ll expect it!  So much he’ll expect!  He’ll give and give and give me things and then wonder why I don’t get anywhere!” The angry tears leaped in her eyes.  “Because he’s different now, he’s changed!  All bursting with his big success, his ‘strike,’ his business—­money mad!  Oh, how I hate his business—­and that detestable partner, too!”

A wave of rebellion swept over her at the way she had been caught, tangled into the life of a man and the fortunes of his business.  But then she thought of the son she had borne him, and this brought quick remorse and tears, from which she fell into a deep sleep.  And when she awoke she found the nurse was waiting with the baby.