"Van!" she cried sharply. "What have you to do with that dishonest Carmichael? What business has he with you? He makes me afraid; and you never came to the theatre at all!" "You're dreaming, Sal." I took her on my knee. "John just came to tell me how to make your everlasting fortune." "But you are not to leave Mr. Dround?" "Just that." "Leave Mr. Dround and go with that dishonest man! What are you thinking of, Van Harrington?" That instinct of women, which people talk about, sometimes acts like a fog: it keeps them from seeing any one thing clearly. Sarah could only see the Drounds and the piece in the paper about bribing. So we talked it over, like husband and wife, arriving nowhere in particular, and finally I said at random:-- "You would like to be rich, to have a lot of money, more than you ever thought to have--millions, maybe?" "Would it mean all that?" she asked slowly. I laughed at the way she took my bait. "Millions and millions, maybe." "Would it be dishonest, Van?" "We don't calculate on going to prison," I joked. "Well," she reflected, "of course you know best. I don't believe a woman should interfere in her husband's business. But the Carmichaels and the Strausses are such common people, even if they are so awfully rich. They haven't the position the Drounds have." When it came to that I kissed her and put out the lights. * * * * * In this life few intimacies fill the full orb of a man's being. Most men of affairs whom I have known, very wisely shut down their desks before coming home, and shut therein a good slice of themselves. Perhaps they do not care to trust any one, even a wife, with their secrets. Perhaps they do not need to share those restless hours of anxiety that come to all men who go into the market to make money. The wife should mean peace and affection: that is right and proper. Nevertheless, there come times when a man must talk out his whole soul to one who understands the language of it. For he hungers to say to another what he scarcely dares say to himself, what is shut up in the dark of his thoughts. It is not advice that he needs, but sympathy--to reveal to another that web of purpose which he has woven, which is himself. Many a man who has carried burdens silently long years knows what I mean. The touch of hand to hand is much: the touch of mind with mind is more. Not that Sarah and I failed to be good married lovers. She was my dear wife. But there are some last honesties that even a wife penetrates not--moments when the building of years is shaking in the storm; moments of loneliness, when mad thoughts arise in a sober head, and a man gropes to find what there is not even in the heart of the woman he loves. * * * * *