' Don't you go and think that."
"No. But you do see we couldn't act otherwise?"
"You must accept it--for this reason, and not for any other reason.
Our hands are tied. If you refuse it, people would wonder."
"Yes--yes. But, Will, you keep saying _you_, when it's really us. It
will be _ours_, not just only mine, you must remember."
"Ah, but I doubt if I could ever take you at your word, there."
After this she sang at her household work. She took as a good sign the
fact that he had spoken doubtfully, instead of formally repudiating
her suggestion that they were to share alike in all the good things
which the money might bring them. She thought it must mean that he was
very near to forgiving her. Death had now almost wiped out
_everything_. He was feeling more and more every day what she had felt
from the beginning, that it was palpably absurd to go on harboring
resentment.
Free now from exaggerated estimates, with ideas readjusted to the
measure of reality, and her natural common sense at work again, she
thought of what the little fortune might truly do for them. It ought
to yield a hundred pounds, twice fifty pounds a year--roughly two
pounds a week coming in unearned. Why, it _was wealth_.
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