ow myself into it with enjoyment
and become a sort of personage and do him great credit--that was his
idea; and the idea remained with him after other delusions had
gone. I was a part of his ambition. That was his really bitter
disappointment--that I failed him as a social success. I think he was
too shrewd not to have known in his heart that such a man as he was,
twenty years older than I, with great business responsibilities that
filled every hour of his life, and caring for nothing else--he must have
felt that there was a risk of great unhappiness in marrying the sort of
girl I was, brought up to music and books and unpractical ideas, always
enjoying myself in my own way. But he had really reckoned on me as a
wife who would do the honors of his position in the world; and I found I
couldn't."

Mrs. Manderson had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she
had yet shown to Trent. Her words flowed freely, and her voice had begun
to ring and give play to a natural expressiveness that must hitherto
have been dulled, he thought, by the shock and self-restraint of the
past few days. Now she turned swiftly from the window and faced him as
she went on, her beautiful face flushed and animated, her eyes gleaming,
her hands moving in slight emphatic gestures, as she surrendered herself
to the impulse of giving speech to things long pent up.

"The people!" she said. "Oh, those people! Can you imagine what it must
be for any one who has lived in a world where there was always creative
work in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and women
with professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believe in
and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor,--can
you think what it means to step out of that into another world where you
_have_ to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all--where money is
the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody's
thoughts--where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work
that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they
have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even duller
than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for display
and silly amusements and silly immoralities--do you know how awful that
life is?... Of course I know there are clever people and people of taste
in that set, but they're swamped and spoiled, and it's the same thing in
the end--empty, empty! Oh! I su