Even if the words he had uttered bore no immediate fruit, what did it matter? The ice was broken. Hereafter he could talk to her again and explain his meaning more fully. All the way to the station he had felt miserable. He had treated her always like a child, and now when he was forced to tell her she must do without any fresh toy to which she took a fancy, he imagined himself little better than a brute. But Dolly had been told and was not vexed. Why, oh! why, had he not spoken to her before! By the sad sea waves Mrs. Mortomley thought those last words over and over and over. She put two and two together. She estimated the amount the interest her own modest fortune brought back to the common fund, and then she reckoned as well as a woman who never professed to keep any accounts could reckon, the total of their annual expenditure. The result was that when her husband did come down and ask her in his usual fashion, if she wanted money, (for indeed he was as much gratified as surprised at having heard no mention of that one thing needful in her short notes), she opened her purse and turned out its contents gleefully. "Haven't I been good?" she asked; and then went on to ask, "Archie, have you really and truly been troubled about these things?" "A little," he answered. "Then why did you not tell me sooner?" "Why should I trouble you about such matters, love?" "Because till I married you, the want of money and I were close acquaintances; perhaps that is the reason why I have always hated considering money since, but I can consider for all that, and I intend to make what you hold in your hand last until I get home again." He put the notes and gold back into her purse slowly and thoughtfully, folding each note by itself, with nervous absent carefulness, dropping each sovereign singly into the little netted bag she kept, with her childish love for pretty things, for them. "My poor Dolly," he said at last. Was it a prevision? Knowledge _could not_ have come to him then, and it must have been a prevision that made the souls of both husband and wife grow for some reason, inexplicable to themselves, sad and sorrowful for a moment. As for Dolly, his three words had sent her eyes out seaward with tears welling in them; but she was the first to recover herself. "We will spoil our pleasure by talking of horrid money matters at the sea side," she remarked, "but when I go home again you must give me a full, true, and particular account of all that is troubling you. Do you hear, sir." "Yes; I hear," he answered, "and I can give you an account of what is troubling me, at once. I have been foolish and I am suffering for my folly. I did not consider the crop I was planting and I am among stinging nettles in consequence; but we shall 'win through it yet,' to quote an old saying, dear, 'we shall win through it yet,' please God." "I wish I was at home again," she said.