t, smiling faintly, with her eyes absently resting on his
face. She was in reality reflecting that a declaration would take some
time to make, and that Selden must surely appear before the moment of
refusal had been reached. Her brooding look, as of a mind withdrawn yet
not averted, seemed to Mr. Rosedale full of a subtle encouragement. He
would not have liked any evidence of eagerness.

"I mean to have her too," he repeated, with a laugh intended to
strengthen his self-assurance. "I generally HAVE got what I wanted in
life, Miss Bart. I wanted money, and I've got more than I know how to
invest; and now the money doesn't seem to be of any account unless I can
spend it on the right woman. That's what I want to do with it: I want my
wife to make all the other women feel small. I'd never grudge a dollar
that was spent on that. But it isn't every woman can do it, no matter how
much you spend on her. There was a girl in some history book who wanted
gold shields, or something, and the fellows threw 'em at her, and she was
crushed under 'em: they killed her. Well, that's true enough: some women
looked buried under their jewelry. What I want is a woman who'll hold her
head higher the more diamonds I put on it. And when I looked at you the
other night at the Brys', in that plain white dress, looking as if you
had a crown on, I said to myself: 'By gad, if she had one she'd wear it
as if it grew on her.'"

Still Lily did not speak, and he continued, warming with his theme: "Tell
you what it is, though, that kind of woman costs more than all the rest
of 'em put together. If a woman's going to ignore her pearls, they want
to be better than anybody else's--and so it is with everything else. You
know what I mean--you know it's only the showy things that are cheap.
Well, I should want my wife to be able to take the earth for granted if
she wanted to. I know there's one thing vulgar about money, and that's
the thinking about it; and my wife would never have to demean herself in
that way." He paused, and then added, with an unfortunate lapse to an
earlier manner: "I guess you know the lady I've got in view, Miss Bart."

Lily raised her head, brightening a little under the challenge. Even
through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr. Rosedale's
millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of them to cancel
her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly
repugnant in the light of Selden's expected