“That’s right,” said Simon slowly. “You’ve driven the nail, Pat. We put up a show all right, but we were trying to play an impossible game. It was when I realized that that I decided to put the money on. I didn’t know how you felt, but I wanted to have it ready—in case you moved.”
“In case I moved?” said Patricia, knitting her brows. Suddenly she sat up. “D’you mean you’d ’ve waited on me?”
“Of course,” said Simon. “Even with the money behind me, I couldn’t ’ve given tongue. I love you better, Pat, than heaven and earth, and I wouldn’t give you up now for fifty rolling worlds—but if you hadn’t spoken I couldn’t have opened my mouth. But then you did speak, lady. You wrote me the sweetest letter that ever—— What is it, Pat?”
“This,” she said faintly. “If that letter hadn’t been stolen, it wouldn’t ’ve gone.”
“I hadn’t the heart to destroy it: but I’d locked it away and thrown the key into the garden, because—I was so anxious . . . to play the game.”
Six months had gone by, and Simon Beaulieu had earned three hundred pounds.
The little flat at Chartres was becoming a luxurious apartment. Now that the tiles were down, the tiny bathroom alone was a flashing chapel of ease. . . .
Sitting at work at his table, Simon looked out of the window with a thankful heart.
“I’m one franc out,” murmured Mrs. Beaulieu. Pencil to lip, she regarded the cornice thoughtfully. “Now what did I spend that on?”
Her husband surveyed her profile with some emotion. He may be forgiven. Its beauty was really startling.
“No. I’ve got that down. Oh, I know. There was a poor woman at the butter-stall with the cutest little boy. She was getting the cheapest butter, and when they told her eggs were seven francs—they’ve gone up, you know—she wouldn’t have any. And there was I, getting the best butter and a pot of honey and some cream. It seemed so awful. . . . And the little boy was watching me with great, big eyes. So I asked him if he liked honey. . . . D’you know, wrapped up in paper he’d got a little empty jar? And his mother said that he always took it when he went to the market with her, and that if ever she had a little money over, then they spent it on honey, and his little jar was filled. She said he was wonderful—never complained. For weeks he’d brought his jar back empty, but he’d never cried or asked for anything. And he was only four. . . . You ought to have seen his face while it was being filled.”