"Live?"
"Paul didn't _live_," he said impatiently. "I can't ask a woman with
two children to think of--hang it, she's under no actual obligation--"
He rose and began to walk the floor. Presently he paused and halted in
front of me, defensively, as Paul had once done years before. "It's not
that I've lost the sense of _my_ obligation--it grows keener with the
growth of my happiness; but my position's a delicate one--"
"Ah, my dear fellow--"
"You _do_ see it? I knew you would." (Yes, he was duller!) "That's the
point. I can't strip my wife and children to carry out a plan--a plan
so nebulous that even its inventor.... The long and short of it is that
the whole scheme must be re-studied, reorganized. Paul lived in a world
of dreams."
I rose and tossed my cigar into the fire. "There were some things he
never dreamed of," I said.