"But I can't give it up. There's more than money to working. There's being in the work you want to do and are fitted for--" "Ah!" She turned on him fiercely. "I thought you cared more for your work than for your family. Now I know it. You would keep us poor, just so you can do the things you like to do. And what right have you to think you're fitted for it? Why can't you be sensible and see what everybody else sees--that as an architect you are--" "Shirley!" But she said it. "--a failure." For a little he stared blindly at her. All other aches were as nothing beside this. . . . Then something within, that had sustained him since he left the office, snapped, gave way. His head and shoulders sagged forward. With a weary gesture he turned and went into the living-room. That storm, too, passed. It had been more than half the hysteria of shattered hope. She had hardly known what she was saying. Now she remembered his eyes as she had dealt her thrust. She was a little frightened at what she had done. She waited nervously for him to come back to her; always David had been first to mend their quarrels, and Shirley thought her kisses balm to heal all wounds. But he did not come back. In the living-room was a heavy silence. At last she went softly to the door. He was standing by the table, still in the broken attitude, with the same dazed eyes. He did not see her. "David!" He did not seem to hear. She went to him and put an arm around his shoulder. "David, I didn't mean to be nasty. It really isn't your fault. I didn't mean--" The sound of her voice brought him out of his daze. He shrank from her touch and, turning, regarded her with a queer new look that held her from him. After a little the sense of her words seemed to come to him. "I think you did mean it," he said wearily. "And I think--I think you are quite right." CHAPTER IV TO THE RESCUE In the morning the world, strangely enough, was outwardly the same. Even the sun had the bad taste to shine, as though a black shadow were not on their hearts. They went through the routine of bath and toilet and breakfast. David glanced over his newspaper and romped a bit with Davy Junior. And because he kissed her as he left for the day, Shirley supposed that the scene of the night before had been filed away with their other tiffs, in a remote pigeonhole labeled "To Be Forgotten." She was glad of that. "And maybe," she thought hopefully, "it was a good thing I said that to him. David is clever and good and dear and all that, but the trouble is he lacks ambition and push. He needs bracing up and to take things more seriously. Perhaps it will be just as well if I take the reins for a while." Her first act as whip was to write a long letter to Aunt Clara.