"
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"Do you think _I'm_ particularly happy?" he continued, ignoring her
question. "Do you think I don't know we're not living as we ought to?"
In an instant Gloria stood trembling beside him.
"I won't _stand_ it!" she burst out. "I won't be lectured to. You and
your suffering! You're just a pitiful weakling and you always
have been!"
They faced one another idiotically, each of them unable to impress the
other, each of them tremendously, achingly, bored. Then she went into
the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
His return had brought into the foreground all their pre-bellum
exasperations. Prices had risen alarmingly and in perverse ratio their
income had shrunk to a little over half of its original size. There had
been the large retainer's fee to Mr. Haight; there were stocks bought at
one hundred, now down to thirty and forty and other investments that
were not paying at all. During the previous spring Gloria had been given
the alternative of leaving the apartment or of signing a year's lease at
two hundred and twenty-five a month. She had signed it. Inevitably as
the necessity for economy had increased they found themselves as a pair
quite unable to save.
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