"It isn't money."
An impatient firmness thinned her face.
"Not even our lost felicity.
And the office can wait, this once.
Come on and eat your eggs, while we talk."
He followed her slowly to the table in the kitchen, shrinking from any emotional scene.
He felt deeply sorry for her, but he had already told her all he could about the project, and he couldn't neglect his imperative duty there.
"Been cleaning?" He looked around at the gleaming white enamel of the kitchen equipment, hoping to divert her.
"I still think we ought to hire a maid, if you insist on working."
"I've too much time already."
Dismissing that, she sat down across from him, still erect with purpose. "Clay, I want you not to work this morning."
"Why not?"
"I want you to drive in with me to Salt City."
He put down his fork, waiting inquiringly.
"I'm getting so uneasy about you, darling." Trouble was a shadow under her fresh makeup.
"I want you to go back to see Dr. Pitcher.
I called his office when I found you at home this morning, looking so tired and thin and bad.
He can examine you at eleven." "But I told you the office is calling."
He attacked his eggs and toast, as if to prove his health.
"I wish you wouldn't worry," he urged her.
"Because I already know what Pitcher would say."
"Please, Clay!"
"He'd tell me just what he did last year."
Forester tried to appear mildly reasonable. "He'd strip me and thump me and listen to my heart and X-ray my ulcers, and then he'd have to admit that all I need is a holiday."
"He says you must rest." Emotion was shattering the round perfection of her diction. "He wants you to stay at the hospital for at least a week, while he tests you for food allergies and works out a diet for you."
"You know I can't take time for that."
He couldn't say why, because everything about the project was still top secret.
"I simply can't leave the job-" "Who'll do it when you're dead?" She half rose, in her agitation, and sat back tautly.
"Clay, you're actually killing yourself.
Dr. Pitcher says you'll break down unless you stop.
Please call the office and tell them we're going."
"I wish we could. To take a long vacation, and finish our honeymoon."
He reached to touch her cold hand, quivering on the table, and he saw her sudden tears.
"I'm awfully sorry, Ruth," he said softly, "that things turned out this way."
"Then you'll go?"
Her pleased voice turned practical.
"Let's see, we've about half an hour to pack-" "No!" He tried to soften his vehemence. "Later, maybe."
"That's what you always say."
Her tightening voice lost its round modulation. "Clay, I hate Starmont! Why can't we just forget it, and go away - and not come back?"
"I sometimes wish we could." He caught her hand again.
"But it's much too late for that, because I've started something I can't stop-"
The telephone interrupted him, and Ruth picked up the extension receiver on the table.
Her upper lip whitened as she listened. "Your Mr. Armstrong," she said tonelessly.
"He wants to know when you'll be down."
"Ten minutes, tell him." Forester pushed back his plate, glad to leave before there were any more tears. "As soon as I can dress."
"Darling!
Don't-" She swallowed that sharp outcry, to murmur into the telephone and set it back mechanically.
"I'm sorry for you, Clay." Dark with disappointment, her humid eyes followed him as he rose. "See you at lunch?"
"If I can manage," he agreed, half absently, already wondering again how any sort of child, lost outside the gate, could possibly threaten the project. "The cafeteria at two, if I can make it."
She said nothing else, and she was still sitting at the kitchen table when he had dressed, her shoulders stooped dejectedly in the new blue robe.