Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/357

 "What?" she insisted eagerly. "Say that again, Mr. Williams. I want to get it perfectly straight."

George crowded close to her. "What is it?" he demanded. "What does John Williams want?"

Fay hushed him with her eyes. Then she turned abruptly toward him and laughed the happy laugh of a girl, while the telephone instrument sagged unnoticed in her hands.

"George," she exulted. "You've been reelected president. Weems wanted you. The Diamond people wanted you. All the old officers are reelected—only Weems is chairman of the Board. They want you to carry on."

George stared.

"Then I've got my job back again?" he said rather unnecessarily.

"And I've got my husband back," laughed Fay.

"Fay, dear?" he asked as they sat down together, awed and subdued by the violence of their own happiness, "just what was it made you go away?"

His wife flushed and hung her head, toying with a tassel on the corner of the davenport.

"What made me go away," she announced very deliberately, "was just supreme discontent with—with myself, with my husband, with . . . the whole darned world."