s just about as I want 'em," said she. "It does take a long
time to do anything in this world!" Also she believed, and a boundless
delight it was to her, that she was the cause of Madelene's professional
success. Everyone talked of the way Madelene was getting on, and wondered
at her luck. "She deserves it, though," said they, "for she can all but
raise the dead." In fact, the secret was simple enough. She had been
taught by her father to despise drugs and to compel dieting and exercise.
She had the tact which he lacked; she made the allowances for human
nature's ignorance and superstition which he refused to make; she
lessened the hardship of taking her common-sense prescriptions by veiling
them in medical hocus-pocus--a compromise of the disagreeable truth which
her father had always inveighed against as both immoral and unwholesome.

Within six months after her marriage she was earning as much as her
husband; and her fame was spreading so rapidly that not only women but
also men, and men with a contempt for the "inferior mentality of the
female," were coming to her from all sides. "You'll soon have a huge
income," said Arthur. "Why, you'll be rich, you are so grasping."

"Indeed I am," replied she. "The way to teach people to strive for high
wages and to learn thrift is to make them pay full value for what they
get. I don't propose to encourage dishonesty or idleness. Besides, we'll
need the money."

Arthur had none of that mean envy which can endure the prosperity of
strangers only; he would not even have been able to be jealous of his
wife's getting on better than did he. But, if he had been so disposed, he
would have found it hard to indulge such feelings because of Madelene.
She had put their married life on the right basis. She made him feel,
with a certainty which no morbid imagining could have shaken, that she
loved and respected him for qualities which could not be measured by any
of the world's standards of success. He knew that in her eyes he was
already an arrived success, that she was absolutely indifferent whether
others ever recognized it or not. Only those who realize how powerful is
the influence of intimate association will appreciate what an effect
living with Madelene had upon Arthur's character--in withering the ugly
in it, in developing its quality, and in directing its strength.

When Scarborough gave Arthur his "chance," Madelene took it as the matter
of course. "I'm sorry it has come so soon