t silver and gold patches on it from
white and yellow lights. Opposite to them the lighthouse at the north end
of Blackwell's Island glowed like a hot coal. Then a great steamer
obscured it.

"Isn't this nice?" Mrs. Wayne asked, and he saw that she wanted her
discovery praised. He never lost the impression that she enjoyed
being praised.

Such a spot, within sight of half a dozen historic sites, was a
temptation to Mr. Lanley, and he would have unresistingly yielded to it
if Mrs. Wayne had not said:

"But we haven't said a word yet about our children."

"True," answered Mr. Lanley. His heart sank. It is not easy, he thought,
to explain to a person for whom you have just conceived a liking that her
son had aspired above his station. He tapped his long, middle finger on
the steering-wheel, just as at directors' meetings he tapped the table
before he spoke, and began, "In a society somewhat artificially formed as
ours is, Mrs. Wayne, it has always been my experience that--" Do what he
would, it kept turning into a speech, and the essence of the speech was
that while democracy did very well for men, a strictly aristocratic
system was the only thing possible for girls--one's own girls, of
course. In the dim light he could see that she had pushed all her hair
back from her brows. She was trying to follow him exactly, so exactly
that she confused him a little. He became more general. "In many ways,"
he concluded, "the advantages of character and experience are with the
lower classes." He had not meant to use the word, but when it slipped
out, he did not regret it.

"In all ways," she answered.

He was not sure he had heard.

"All the advantages?" he said.

"All the advantages of character."

He had to ask her to explain. One reason, perhaps, why Mrs. Wayne
habitually avoided a direct question was that, when once started, her
candor had no bounds. Now she began to speak. She spoke more eagerly and
more fluently than he, and it took him several minutes to see that quite
unconsciously she was making him a strange, distorted complement to his
speech, that in her mouth such words as "the leisure classes, your
sheltered girls," were terms of the deepest reproach. He must understand,
she said, that as she did not know Miss Severance, there was nothing
personal, nothing at all personal, in her feeling,--she was as careful
not to hurt his feelings as he had tried to be not to hurt hers,--but she
did own to a prejudice--at l