Big Poker Site hazard of new fortunes 8

from you. Give it up and take Mr. Fulkersons offer! Its a perfect interposition, coming just at this time! Why, do it! Mercy!" she suddenly arrested herself, "he wouldnt expect you to get along on the possible profits?" Her face expressed the awfulness of the notion. March smiled reassuringly, and waited to give himself the pleasure of the sensation he meant to give her. "If Ill make striking phrases for it and edit it, too, hell give me four thousand dollars." He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and watched his wifes face, luminous with the emotions that flashed through her mind-doubt, joy, anxiety. "Basil! You dont mean it! Why, take it! Take it instantly! Oh, what a thing to happen! Oh, what luck! But you deserve it, if you first suggested it. What an escape, what a triumph over all those hateful insurance people! Oh, Basil, Im afraid hell change his mind! You ought to have accepted on the spot. You might have known I would approve, and you could so easily have taken it back if I didnt. Telegraph him now! Run right out with the despatch--Or we can send Tom!" In these imperatives of Mrs. Marchs there was always much of the conditional. She meant that he should do what she said, if it were entirely right; and she never meant to be considered as having urged him. "And suppose his enterprise went wrong?" her husband suggested. "It wont go wrong. Hasnt he made a success of his syndicate?" "He says so--yes." "Very well, then, it stands to reason that hell succeed in this, too. He wouldnt undertake it if he didnt know it would succeed; he must have capital." "It will take a great deal to get such a thing going; and even if hes got an Angel behind him--" She caught at the word--"An Angel?" "Its what the theatrical people call a financial backer. He dropped a hint of something of that kind." "Of course, hes got an Angel," said his wife, promptly adopting the word. "And even if he hadnt, still, Basil, I should be willing to have you risk it. The risk isnt so great, is it? We shouldnt be ruined if it failed altogether. With our stocks we have two thousand a year, anyway, and we could pinch through on that till you got into some other business afterward, especially if wed saved something out of your salary while it lasted. Basil, I want you to try it! I know it will give you a new lease of life to have a congenial occupation." March laughed, but his wife persisted. "Im all for your trying it, Basil; indeed I am. If its an experiment, you can give it up." "It can give me up, too." "Oh, nonsense! I guess theres not much fear of that. Now, I want you to telegraph Mr. Fulkerson, so that hell find the despatch waiting for him when he gets to New York. Ill take the whole responsibility, Basil, and Ill risk all the consequences."
III.
Marchs face had sobered more and more as she followed one hopeful burst with another, and now it expressed a positive pain. But he forced a smile and said: "Theres a little condition attached. Where did you suppose it was to be published?" "Why, in Boston, of course. Where else should it be published?" She looked at him for the intention of his question so searchingly that he quite gave up the attempt to be gay about it. "No," he said, gravely, "its to be published in New York." She fell back in her chair. "In New York?" She leaned forward over the table toward him, as if to make sure that she heard aright, and said, with all the keen reproach that he could have expected: "In New York, Basil! Oh, how could you have let me go on?" He had a sufficiently rueful face in owning: "I oughtnt to have done it, but I got started wrong. I couldnt help putting the best foot, forward at first--or as long as the whole thing was in the air. I didnt know that you would take so much to the general enterprise, or else I should have mentioned the New York condition at once; but, of course, that puts an end to it." "Oh, of course," she assented, sadly. "We COULDNT go to New York." "No, I know that," he said; and with this a perverse desire to tempt her to the impossibility awoke in him, though he was really

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