"Well, I haven't made it yet."
She possessed the frugality of the Hutchinses. And some times my
lavishness had frightened her, as when we had taken the suite of rooms we
now occupied.
"Are you sure you can afford them, Hugh?" she had asked when we first
surveyed them.
I began married life, and carried it on without giving her any conception
of the state of my finances. She had an allowance from the first.
As the steamer slipped westward my spirits rose, to reach a climax of
exhilaration when I saw the towers of New York rise gleaming like huge
stalagmites in the early winter sun. Maude likened them more happily--to
gigantic ivory chessmen. Well, New York was America's chessboard, and the
Great Players had already begun to make moves that astonished the world.
As we sat at breakfast in a Fifth Avenue hotel I ran my eye eagerly over
the stock-market reports and the financial news, and rallied Maude for a
lack of spirits.
"Aren't you glad to be home?" I asked her, as we sat in a hansom.
"Of course I am, Hugh!" she protested. "But--I can't look upon New York
as home, somehow. It frightens me."