His manner clearly showed displeasure, almost contempt, and he turned
to Miss Beggs. "What do you think?" he demanded. "I understand you have
been a school-teacher."
"Oh, you are quite right," she responded; "at least about children, and
it is clear from them that most parents are idiotically lax." A blaze
of discontent, loathing, surprisingly invaded her pallid face.
"A rod of iron," August recommended.
The contrast between his wife and Miss Beggs recurred, intensified--one
an absolute wreck and the other as solidly slender as a birch tree.
Fate had played a disgusting trick on him. In the prime of his life he
was tied to a hopeless invalid. It put an unfair tension on him. Women
were charming, gracious--or else they were nothing. If Emmy's money had
been an assistance at first he had speedily justified its absorption in
the business. She owed him, her husband, everything possible. He
suddenly pictured mountains of bread, bread towering up into the
clouds, fragrant and appetizing; and Emmy, a thing of bones, gazing
wistfully at it. August Turnbull, with a feeling like panic, brushed
the picture from his mind.
The dessert was apparently a bomb of frozen coffee, but the center
revealed a delicious creamy substance flaked with pistache. The cold
sweet was exactly what he craved, and he ate it rapidly in a curious
mounting excitement. With the coffee he fingered the diminutive glass
of golden brandy and a long dark roll of oily tobacco.
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